Policies Affecting Population in West Africa

Abstract

Few West African governments have expressed official concern about population but overall impact of development policies has been to increase population growth greatly and accelerate movement from rural to urban areas. Of the 20 West African nations only Ghana and Nigeria have expressed official concern over expanding growth rates while Dahomey and Gambia have commissioned studies of their population situations. The other countries have a few concerned individuals but the governments on the whole are not officially concerned with population. Efforts are being made by many countries to control external migration; several nations have active efforts to expell illegal immigrants. Resettlement of rural areas is also being tried. However industrial development is concentrated in the urban areas and rural young people flock to the cities to get jobs. All these countries have greatly expanded public health efforts and as a result infant and child mortality is declining rapidly and life expectancy has been greatly extended. Family allowances are a considerable proportion of the average mans income in several of these nations and have a pronatalist effect. However the increased educational efforts are limiting population growth somewhat. Educated couples tend to have fewer children and the costs of books fees and more years of support for children in school leads poorer families to opt for fewer births. Increased industrialization has also increased the need for secondary schooling making each child much more expensive to the family. Although little official concern has been shown about population to date the trend is to realize that other policies have a population component. The increasing costs of public services to mushrooming numbers of people are having an impact.