New Vision (Kampala)
NEWS
October 27,
2006
By Felix Osike And
Norman Miwambo
(Kampala) UGANDA'S rising population growth could create additional demands on water and food supplies, the House of Lords has warned.
Uganda's population of 28.2 million people is expected reach 120m by 2050, according to experts.During the debate held on October 19, Lord Dick Taverne, who sponsored the motion, asked what steps the British Government was taking to contribute to the stabilisation of Africa's population growth.
Taverne said although AIDS in Africa was now top of the agenda, stabilisation of population growth was more important."In Uganda, where AIDS is a moderately severe epidemic, the population is expected to grow from 30 million to over 60 million by 2025 and to 120 million by the middle of this century.
There is no official concern about population growth in Uganda and yet its impact on poverty is likely to be immense," he said.Taverne cited Ghana, where more women are likely to die from unsafe abortions than from AIDS, yet funds are being diverted from family planning to fight AIDS.
He said in Niger, there were more meetings about sex among the elderly than on population growth and blamed family planning failure on religious influence.
[Because of the nature of the Special to the NY Times reported yesterday by Monsieur Girodian, and which is receiving such lively and instructive comment today, there are some who might doubt the authenticity of this almost perfectly co-incidental piece. They would do so at the peril of their wallet should they wish to wager. Otis]
I always get a kick out of statements like "rising population growth could create additional demands on water and food supplies". The implication is that it (rising population growth, not to be confused with simple population growth, or regular rising populations) might *not* "create additional demands on water and food supplies". When was the last time any population managed to grow without consuming more food and water??
I also have to laugh at statements like "is expected [to] reach 120m by 2050", according to the "experts". Presumably these experts are using population growth models that assume the presence of an infinite supply of energy, food, and water. Under these assumptions, yes, the population of Uganda could hit 120 million in 40 years. Since none of those resources is in fact infinite, I am very skeptical that any African nation could quadruple its current population.
And of course that's to say nothing of the "AIDS epidemic", which was always supposed to be decimating the population of Africa "any year now". It's a "ticking time bomb", isn't it? But wait - how can a nation with a "moderately severe" AIDS epidemic be expecting to quadruple its population in two generations or so? I thought that wasn't supposed to be possible, according to the AIDS "experts".
Posted by: Steve | October 30, 2006 at 10:10 AM
Steve,
Come on, you know that according to these experts anything is possible.
Look what those Harvard goons said in the NY Times just yesterday (that we had the scoop on Saturday, natch.)
Posted by: Otis | October 30, 2006 at 10:20 AM