Nigeria and other countries in Africa are bucking the trend of population decline.
According to the new Lancet study, the population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to treble in size to more than three billion people by 2100.
Nigeria will become the world’s second most populous country, with 791 million people, it says.
The new study predicts that Nigeria will have one of the largest working-age populations in the world by 2100 and see big increases in GDP.
But rapid population expansion puts a strain on infrastructure and social structures, and Nigerian officials have spoken out about trying to ease population growth.
In a 2018 interview with the BBC, Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed said there needed to be a discussion about the country’s birth rate – which is among the highest in the world.
“We have a lot of families who cannot even feed the children they have, not to talk about good healthcare or even giving them good quality education, so we have to talk about these things,” she said. (BBC)
