La pauta poblacional de África: los desiguales niveles de la transición demográfica

Abstract

Delay in demographic development of Africa in its entirety and, especially, southerly from Sahara, is directly caused by poverty; that delay falls in a negative way upon possibilities of economic growth and social and human progress. The reasons are not only restrictive factors of high fecundity, strong demographic growth, low schooling and terribly high illiteracy, but also another, until now, less considered factor: the main causes of mortality, HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis spark off additional health expenditure and productivity fall, slowing down human development. The result is an increasing impoverishment that limits and even holds up demographic and social progress, paralysing the incipient epidemiologic transition and, actually, the demographic transition itself. There are, consequently, two grate gaps: first, the African continent in its entirety in relation to the First World; recently appeared, the second gap separates more and more impoverished Subsahariana Africa —with many regions where health transition collapsed— from Northern Africa, who has founded his way towards human development, with demographic transition already in its second phase.