Demographic trends

Demography [*] is essential to understanding societies and policy-making in all fields. In Africa, and especially in sub-Saharan Africa, taking population dynamics into account is particularly crucial given that they are undoubtedly among the most powerful ever seen in human history.

Superlatives are usually used when referring to West African demographic growth and the population’s youth. The extent to which countries of the region must endeavour in terms of education, access to health care and employment is illustrated by generational forecasts. These forecasts indicate that the reconstitution of settlement patterns (changes in population geography) is far from complete, as population mobility is the consequence of high population growth.

Demography is also useful for those who want to understand social and even political changes. West Africans who “fought for independence” (in the first analysis, those who were at least 20 years old in 1960) today represent only 3% of the population. The West African borders, have so often been considered “new” yet they are now “older” than the vast majority of the population. A large part of the population has no memory of the “pre-structural adjustment” period, or of the Cold War era. The urban population is about to become the majority.

The aim of this chapter of the Atlas on Regional Integration is not to analyse the social, geographic and economic changes and perspectives in West Africa, but to provide the necessary demographic groundwork.