Culture and Society
On a global scale, the human population is certainly booming. It officially hit the 8-billion mark back in 2022 and is expected to spend the next 60 years or so creeping up to over 10 billion. On a country-wide scale, however, the story is a bit more complex.
We know this thanks to the latest World Factbook data published by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the US, which keeps tabs on all kinds of different intelligence, including population growth rates – these are percentage figures that take into account births, deaths, and migration when it comes to the average change in a population.
According to the CIA’s most recent data, the following are the top 10 countries currently experiencing the highest rates of population growth:
- South Sudan – 4.65 percent
- Niger – 3.66 percent
- Angola – 3.33 percent
- Benin – 3.29 percent
- Equatorial Guinea – 3.23 percent
- Uganda – 3.18 percent
- Democratic Republic of the Congo – 3.11 percent
- Chad – 3.01 percent
- Mali – 2.9 percent
- Zambia – 2.83 percent
The top 10 is completely dominated by African countries, which reflects a trend seen across the continent; according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Africa’s population has increased tenfold since 1900, attributed primarily to dropping mortality rates and increasingly high birth rates.
The population boom isn’t expected to last forever, however. There are countries on the CIA’s list where the population growth rate is in the negative, meaning the number of people there is shrinking.
A significant reason behind the drop could be that, in many of those places, fertility rates are also falling. Some researchers have anticipated that by the end of this century, 97 percent of countries won’t have fertility rates high enough to sustain their population size.
The consequence could be that, despite the rapid growth seen in some countries at present, the global population may peak much earlier than previously estimated, according to a recent UN report, leading to a worldwide population drop sometime in the mid-2080s.
Whether or not that prediction comes true, and the potential consequences if it does, remains to be seen – but keeping an eye on what’s going on in individual countries at the moment can provide us with valuable clues.
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