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An Essay Sample on Overpopulation in Africa
In the late 18th century, an English economist named Thomas Malthus first proposed the theory of "overpopulation.†He predicted that England’s population growth would eventually outpace the production of food and the availability of other essential resources (Malthus 14). Thankfully, much of Malthus’s theory was proven wrong, as the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century allowed England (along with most of Europe and the United States) to develop its economy at a rapid pace. Famines and economic uncertainty became increasingly rare, and subsistence farming was soon replaced with other, more lucrative industries such as manufacturing and commercial agriculture. Unlike Europe and the United States, however, many African nations are still industrializing, and they continue to struggle with the burdens of overpopulation. By examining three developing nations: Angola, Burundi, and Malawi, it will become apparent that overpopulation is a serious economic and humanitarian issue in much of Africa today.
The first nation to be examined, Angola, is a former Portuguese colony with a population of 31 million people. Decades of guerilla warfare against the Portuguese Empire saw much of the country’s colonial infrastructure destroyed, and nearly 100,000 Angolans lost their lives in the struggle. Following Angola’s independence in 1974, a civil war erupted that would last for another three decades and claim the lives of more than 800,000 Angolan civilians (James 158). These extreme hardships have made industrialization nearly impossible for most of the last century, and as such, very little progress has been made. Angola’s population has continued to swell, both from its impressive annual growth rate of 3.2% (to put this number into perspective, the annual growth of the US population is about .05%) and a large influx of refugees from the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (Angola World Bank). Many of the problems facing Angola today are similar to the predictions made by Malthus nearly two centuries ago: malnutrition, disease, poverty, and even the occasional famine (Malthus 32-34). Humanitarian relief efforts by the United Nations have made some headway, but as long as Angola’s population continues to boom, and industrialization efforts continue to stall, the problems caused by overpopulation will persist (Angola WFP).
Much like Angola, the small African nation of Burundi has also suffered a great deal since its independence from Belgium in the 1960s. Decades of internal ethnic strife, government instability, and spillover of violent conflicts from neighboring Rwanda and the DRC have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Burundians. Despite being roughly the size of Haiti, Burundi’s already struggling population of 11 million continues to grow by a staggering rate of 3.1% annually (Burundi World Bank). Burundi is one of the least food secure nations on the planet, with 1 in 3 of its citizens facing an immediate food crisis, and more than 60% of the population living in extreme poverty (Burundi WFP). The nation’s massive, hungry population is only able to ward off recurring famines thanks to the assistance of NGOs and extranational organizations such as the UN and the African Union. These are short-term solutions, however, as it is ultimately up to Burundi to remedy these problems by establishing a reliable industrial base.
In contrast to Angola and Burundi, Malawi has enjoyed a relatively peaceful existence since its independence in the 1960s. The British Empire helped to facilitate a peaceful transition from colonial to local majority rule. And aside from a few decades of semi-authoritarian rule, Malawi has largely been spared from the same types of internal conflicts that have destroyed many African nations. Despite this prolonged period of peace and stability, Malawi’s situation may very well be the most precarious of the three, as its hyper-dense population of more than 17 million (which grows by 2.6% annually) faces a complete agricultural collapse (Malawi World Bank). To this day, the overwhelming majority of Malawians are engaged in small-scale subsistence agriculture. This fragile system of small, decentralized plots of land is greatly threatened by the looming prospect of climate change, as persistent droughts and continued soil erosion potentially stand to destroy the nation’s entire food system (Malawi WFP).
It is plain to see that there are several common themes between these three nations. The first, most obvious problem, is the massive, constant population growth that they are experiencing. On its own, this would not necessarily be a serious issue, as many more developed nations such as the United States, Germany, and China have all experienced population booms in the previous century with few consequences. The main difference, however, is the very essence of the theory of overpopulation: that these population spikes are not being met with sufficient industrial and societal growth, exactly as Malthus predicted in the 1790s. Angola, Burundi, and Malawi are simply a small sampling of a continent that is currently being ravaged by the challenges of overpopulation. Somalia, the DRC, Zimbabwe, the Central African Republic, and countless others face similar challenges and have encountered similar failures. Simply put, overpopulation continues to be a serious problem in most of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Works Cited
Malthus, Thomas. An Essay on the Principle of Population. J. Johnson, 1798.
Martin, James. A Political History of the Civil War in Angola, 1974–1990 (The East-South Relations Series). 1st ed., Routledge, 2011.
