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Africa's Population Problems

Africa's population problems are seen by some as both a cause and a consequence of underdevelopment (White, Tagoe, Stiff, Adazu and Smith). Massive migration to cities is seen as a result of failed rural development in sub-Saharan Africa, and leads to urban poverty, stressed social services, environmental degradation, and political upheaval. While sub-Saharan Africa still has the lowest rate of urbanization in the world, it is now undergoing the world's fastest rate of urbanization. In Western Africa, many social ills have been linked to rapid urban growth and "overurbanization," and more than 50 million people are expected to migrate to cities in West Africa in the next 10 years. In 1998, 63 percent of African governments saw patterns of population distribution as major problems, with rural-urban migration and the resulting growth of cities their main concern. Many African governments have instituted policies of improvement of rural services and infrastructure to try and stem the rural-urban flow. They have tried to encourage the development of small and medium-sized towns to draw the people away from the big cities which attract a disproportionate share of rural-urban migrants.

Migration patterns in Africa have been studied over the years and in the 1970s and 1980s, attention was focused on the nature and implications of the migrant labor system in South Africa (Posel). It was assumed that migrant labor would not be part of post-Apartheid South Africa, and that the system of internal labor migration was associated with legislation inhibiting and controlling the urbanization of Africans. It was assumed that post-Apartheid, people would not elect to be migrant workers, but would choose to settle where they worked. However, there is no evidence that the circular migration of labor ended with the end of Apartheid. In fact, temporary labor migration has increased because of the increase of women in the labor force.

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Africa's Population Problems. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:45, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1703386.html