Africa’s population expected to double to 2.5 billion by 2050
Africa is expected to double her population from 1.2 billion to about 2.5 billion people by 2050.
Africans have therefore been urged to avoid polygamous marriages, opt for family planning services and to reduce child birth and control population growth.
Leaders on the continent must consider investing hugely in health and education, create decent jobs to push rapid socio-economic development, and improve on the livelihoods of the people.
Dr Reiner Klinghoz, a former Director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development who gave the advice, said Africa must stepped up measures to reduce child mortality as well.
He said African leaders were role models on their continent, and they ought to plan their families well so they could thereby implement policies that would control population growth as well.
Dr Klinghoz indicated it was important Africa achieved set targets for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, so the leaders must also focus much attention on investing in their human resource development and creating decent works for their people.
He was addressing Journalists attending a five-day Media and Migration school, underway in Rabat, Morocco, aimed at building bridges between Journalists in Europe and Africa on migration.
Dubbed: “Journalism in a global context-challenge migration”, the Institute in close partnership with the Africa Institute of Media, Migration and Development (AIMMAD), the AMI and Goethe Institute with funding from the Robert Bosch Stiftung is organising the September School.
Dr Klinghoz observed among the identifiable driving forces of migration Africa – income, security and living standard gaps, education and environment- population growth and poverty remained key factors on the continent.
He called on European Union to show interest in the development of Africa particularly in the area of investing in her people and job creation to reduce all forms of migration to the EU countries.
Dr Gotz Schmidt-Bremme, the German Ambassador to Morocco, said his country believed in vocational training as a possible remedy to control migration and called on African leaders to focus on that direction.
He said in 2015 alone out of the about 260 million migrants who cross borders to Europe, only 150 million of them were labour migrants, and most of them had no legal stay.
In his opinion, Dr Schmidt-Bremme said migration should not be a necessity for African migrants but a choice, hence the need for African governments to address issues of poverty, independent justice and rapid population growth.
Dr Schmidt-Bremme expressed regret that some migrants go through exploitation, commercial sex work, and engaged in various crimes in destination countries, a situation which he added remained a great worry to the EU.
Source: GNA