The Environmental History of Africa

Topic 5 - Population in Africa History

  1. Demography
    1. Study of human populations, growth, distribution, behavior and patterns in aggregate.
    2. Demography as a topic and a social science method is divided between disciplines for spatial, historical, or behavioral issues.
    3. Role of human population and its changes is essential to understanding the connection between environment and ecology.
    4. Fertility (the average number of pregnancies per woman over the course of her child-bearing years) is one factor of population growth or decline.
    5. Mortality (rate of deaths within a population) balances the rate of fertility.
    6. Infant mortality (rate at which infants fail to reach a given age, i.e. 5 years old).
    7. Population growth is affected in complex ways by economic, cultural practice, and political factors as well as by medical technology of birth control and public health.

  2. African Demography is central to several historical debates
    1. Growth rates and productivity in past decade. Africa (especially East Africa and the Great Lakes region) has had the world's highest population growth rate in the period after 1960.
    2. What are sources of high growth rate?
    3. When did it begin? How do we find out?
    4. What is the effect of population growth on food security and economic growth historically?

  3. Sources for African Demographic History
    1. Little census information before 1960.
    2. Proxy data, such as observations of settlement patterns, is available widely after WWII but in some cases colonial records indicate population statistics back to the late nineteenth century. Such data must be used carefully and methods for its collection scrutinized.
    3. One example of method for gauging population growth is Swiss study of the Simen mountain area of northern Ethiopia. There geographers compared the density of houses in a 1955 aerial survey with such data from 1975 and estimated population growth. They also supplemented such aerial surveys with ground level interviews, a checking process known as "ground truth." Such methods indicate the dynamics of population growth in a given area (in this case, the data indicated a 2.9% growth rate). But how far back can we use this method?

  4. 19th Century demographic history is critical to understanding sources of growth and effect of colonialism: Important topics are:
    1. Was there population growth or decline in 19th c.?
    2. What was the effect of the E.African slave trade?
      1. How many souls exported or taken?
      2. Effect of trade on local growth and stability?
    3. What effect did local and regional warfare have on population levels and rates of growth?
    4. What effect did colonialism have on numbers, distribution, health, and daily lives of African population (ages of marriage, sexual activity, child rearing, gender relations)?

  5. Several Approaches to Meaning of and Reasons for Population Change in Africa, esp. at key transition to colonial Modern Period
    1. Malthusian theory argues that population growth is a negative factor whereby food production advances at a slower rate than population growth. This approach assumes a negative effect of population growth. This perspective forecasts famine as a natural consequence of population growth.
    2. Boserup theory (based on Southeast Asian observation and Western Eureopean cases) states that human population growth and density stimulates technological changes that increase the productivity of land (though productivity per unit of labor decreases). This view posits an optimistic outcome of population growth.
    3. There are two specific lines of argument that attempt to explain Africa's recent high population growth rates:
      1. Natalist argument based on European Demographic Transition theory. Historically, it argues, Africa's high mortality rates were matched by high levels of mortality. Change in population growth resulted from improvements in health (i.e. declining mortality) brought on by the peace and public health measures introduced to Africa by colonial rule, modernization, and famine relief.
      2. The Anti-natalist argument states that colonial health impact could not have affected death rates enough to produce such dramatic growth rates, it must have been a change in fertility since colonialism; i.e. birth rates were lower previously and controlled by social decisions eg. child spacing, age of marriage, cultural restrictions on pre-marital sex. Colonialism disrupted these social mechanisms for fertility control.
      3. Anti-natalists argue that Africa has had many demographic histories and not simply been subject to uncontrolled high fertility.
      4. Natalists counter that there is strong evidence throughout continent that labor needs meant a strong incentive to incorporate new members, ridicule of God who had only one son and Thornton Kongo baptism records which show 48.1000 (same as 1985).