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For most of our history, the human population grew slowly,
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until new discoveries brought us more food,
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and made us live longer.
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In just a hundred years, the human population quadrupled.
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This led to apocalyptic visions of an overcrowded earth.
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But the population growth rate actually peaked in the 1960s.
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Since then, fertility rates have crashed as countries industrialize and develop.
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The world population is now expected to balance out at around 11 billion by the end of the century.
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But the big picture conceals the details.
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Let's look at one region in particular.
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Sub-Saharan Africa.
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In 2019, it was home to a billion people living in 46 countries.
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Although its growth rate has slowed down in the last few decades,
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it's still much higher than in the rest of the world.
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While some projections expect around 2.6 billion people,
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others reckon with up to 5 billion by 2100.
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Such growth would be a huge challenge for any society.
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But Sub-Saharan Africa is also the poorest region on earth.
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So, is Sub-Saharan Africa doomed?
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And, why did the projections vary by 2.4 billion people?
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As always, it's complicated.
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Sub-Saharan Africa is a made-up idea,
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and in many ways, unhelpful one.
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Botswana is as far away from Sierra Leone,
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as Ireland is from Kazakhstan.
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And they have about as much in common.
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But without generalizing a little bit,
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this video would be an hour long!
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We've also talked to many different scientists for this video,
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and they disagreed on a lot of things.
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Mainly, on how much fertility matters to poverty.
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We've done our best to summarize our research and what they told us,
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but take it with a grain of salt,
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and check out our sources when we discussed this in more detail.
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Okay, let's zoom out to the global perspective again.
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A few decades ago, many countries in Asia were at a similar point to Sub-Saharan Africa today.
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Large parts of the population were living in extreme poverty,
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and birth rates were very high.
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Take Bangladesh.
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In the 1960s, the average woman had 7 children in her lifetime.
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25% of them died before they turned 5,
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and of the ones that survived,
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only one of five would learn to read and write.
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Life expectancy was about 45,
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and per capita income was among the lowest in the world.
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So, beginning in the 1960s,
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Bangladesh started a family planning program,
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based on three main pillars.
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1. Education helped to change women's outlook.
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Women with a higher education tend to want fewer kids,
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and become mothers later in life.
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2. Better health care lowered child mortality,
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leading to parents' wanting fewer children,
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because they could expect them to survive.
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3. Field workers brought contraceptives even to the remotest areas,
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which drove contraceptive use from 8% in 1975,
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to 76% in 2019.
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Together, these measures greatly slowed down population growth.
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In 1960, the average Bangladeshi women had 7 kids.
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In 1995, 4,
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and, in 2019, it was down to 2.
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This also changed the country's demographics and the economy.
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Before, many children were born,
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but died before they got to contribute to society.
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As far fewer kids die and fewer kids are born, things change.
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Kids get an education,
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and turn into productive adults.
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The government was able to shift some of their resources
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from lowering child mortality to boosting the economy.
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By 2024, Bangladesh is expected to graduate from the category of least developed countries
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to the status of a developing economy.
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Other Asian countries like South Korea, India, Thailand or the Philippines
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have gone through a similar process,
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often even faster.
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Investment in health and education led to lower birth rates,
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which changed the composition of the population,
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and enabled governments to boost the economy.
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Why didn't the same thing happen everywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa?
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Africa, as a whole, has made considerable progress with childhood mortality.
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but especially in Sub-Saharan Africa,
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education has improved slower than in other parts of the world.
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And, while in total, contraceptive use has doubled in the region since 1990,
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the unmet need for modern contraception among adolescents is still at about 60%.
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The reasons for this are complicated,
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and it's impossible to give a single answer here.
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Africa is a big place with diverse cultures and people.
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But there are a few main factors.
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Many Sub-Saharan Nations have suffered under colonization until only a few decades ago,
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and had rough transition periods towards independence.
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The young nations were often ethnically heterogeneous and lacked unity.
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Some areas have been repeatedly racked by civil wars,
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military conflicts or suffered under unstable governments,
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which made it really hard to expand infrastructure and health care.
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So, Africa had a worse starting point than Asia.
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Foreign aid and how it was applied, especially during the cold war,
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is also a contentious issue.
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But this topic is too complex to summarize in a few sentences,
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so we'll make a whole new video about it in the future.
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And lastly, there are cultural aspects that
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make talking about family plan in the context of Africa difficult.
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Critics say that trying to bring fertility down is an intrusion into culture and tradition.
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But not speaking about an issue will not help solve it.
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Not all of these things apply to every country in the region.
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We're talking about 46 countries after all,
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some of them deeply troubled,
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others already flourishing,
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all different and facing unique problems.
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If population growth continues at its present rate,
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then Sub-Saharan Africa could grow to more than 4 billion people by 2100.
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Okay. So, what can be done?
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Actually, a lot!
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Especially, investment and aid that helped to build systems for education,
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family planning, and health care.
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Surprisingly small changes could have an extreme impact.
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For example, if women get a better education,
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and have their first child just two years later in life.
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This tiny gap between this generation and the next one
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would lead to 400 million fewer people in 2100,
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with 3.6 billion in total.
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If education and family planning are made available to every African women,
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universal access to contraception makes having kids a decision.
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If families get to choose how many kids they want,
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birth projections fall by 30%, to 2.8. billion people.
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This isn't just theory.
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There are already examples that are reason for optimism.
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Ethiopia, the African country with the second-biggest population,
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has made a lot of progress in a relatively short amount of time.
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Improving health services lead to a drop in child mortality
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from 20% to 7% since 1990.
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And up to 30% of the annual budget was invested in education,
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and the number of schools increased 25-fold over two decades.
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So, summarizing,
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there are serious challenges ahead,
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but they are far from unsolvable.
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Sub-Saharan Africa does not need pity or gifts,
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but attention and fair investment.
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It's a region rich in resources, culture, and potential.
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If things go right,
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we'll see a turn-around similar to the one we've seen across most of Asia
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in the last 30 years.
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