Nigeria will be the third most populous country on Earth by 2050. The Democratic Republic of Congo will be in the top ten. Ethiopia's population will have doubled. These are not projections from advocacy organisations — they are median estimates from the United Nations.
A young, growing population is an economic asset under the right conditions: sufficient jobs, adequate education, reliable infrastructure, and governance capable of channelling growth into broad-based development. The history of demographic dividends elsewhere suggests these conditions are necessary but not automatic.
The cities where this population growth will predominantly occur — Lagos, Kinshasa, Dar es Salaam — are already under significant infrastructure stress. The investment required to manage this growth productively is an order of magnitude larger than current trajectories suggest.
