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Why "Demographic Fatigue" Contributes Little to Our Understanding of Contemporary Africa

By Lisa Ann Richey

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Lester Brown and his colleagues from the Worldwatch Institute have put forth the concept of “demographic fatigue” as the explanation for what they understand as a “crisis” engulfing the African continent.1 Their publication Beyond Malthus coins the phrase “demographic fatigue” to describe what they perceive as the inability of governments to cope with the consequences of their rapidly expanding populations. Yet this work never extends its analysis beyond Malthus. Instead, it remains stuck in a narrow understanding of population growth as the foundation of all ills in Africa and a naive belief that more family planning and fewer children will provide the cure.

Lisa Richey is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Copenhagen and a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University. She has written extensively on foreign aid and family planning and population politics in Tanzania. Her article “Family Planning and the Politics of Population in Tanzania: International to Local Discourse,” appeared in the Journal of Modern African Studies, 37, 3 Sept.(1999).