Finally, Dr Grace Bediako came out with the preliminary results of the 2010 National Population and Housing Census, the fifth census since Ghana’s independence. Setting the 2010 figures against previous census data lays bare our national population story. It’s not good. We are on the loose. We’ve lost control. Our population growth rate is frightening.
Even a quick look at Ghana’s population growth trends paints a shocking picture and indicates that over time, we the people have the capacity to fill up every inch of space of land in this country with human beings. It appears that while everyone looks on, even people with no mojos are also busy populating the earth. Left to us the individuals alone, we would turn our bodies into baby-making factories regardless of whether we can afford to take care of the children or not.
Ghana’s population growth must be declared a national crisis issue. We must have a national conversation about how to put a lid over this pressing matter. If the current trend of population growth had been a disease, it would have qualified as an epidemic. And this should be. Here are the bare facts, with a simple trend analysis.
Baby-Making Escapades From 1961 to 2010:
The first population census after Ghana became an independent country was conducted in 1961. We recorded a population of 6.7 million as our post-independence baseline figure. What a manageable number! But just nine years afterwards in 1970, we increased to 8.5 million, a 27 per cent increase. Fair enough. Still manageable.
But by 1984, we had almost doubled the 1961 figures and Ghana’s population stood at 12.3 million. Note that the 1970s through 1980s were some of the worst periods of Ghana’s underdevelopment when adventurist soldiers toyed with our governance, rudely moving us through redemption, liberation and revolution – all of no consequence whatsoever.
What baffles me is that during that volatile period, in the midst of famine, torture, fear and hopelessness, we did not relent in the baby-making arena. In the midst of the storm, we sought for solace in warm embracement. So it happened that in spite of our national challenges, we continued to be happy and busy at the groin region, and by such reckless acts of embracement, doubled our population in two decades.
Owing to our industriousness at the baby-making factory, by 1990, our population stood at 17.2 million. Ten years later in 2000, as we entered the new millennium of the Twenty First century, Ghana’s population was about 18.9 million; definitely unmanageable, but still counting. In the most recent census last year, preliminary estimates place our population at 24.2 million.
These figures imply that during the Fourth Republic alone (from the 1990s to the present; in two decades), we have shamelessly (or proudly, depending on your vantage point) topped up our population by about seven million human beings. Eh!!!!!
No wonder the number of young people who sell odds and ends by our roadsides continue to increase and youth unemployment is on the high. These are the children of the Fourth Republic – young, vibrant, unemployable, under-employed or unemployed. And chances are – that they are without hope for the future.
Our population growth trend also implies that since we cut off our apron strings from the Queen of England to become a nation state, in a spate of fifty years (1961 to 2010), Ghana’s population has grown from 6.7 million to the current 24.2 million. Simply put, we have almost quadrupled our population since independence.
Eh!!!! If Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah should make the mistake of popping out of his plush grave to see his Ghana, he would not recognize our plumb number as against the number of people he inherited at independence.
The rate of our population growth is not sustainable by any stretch of the imagination, whichever way we cut it. We can’t afford it. We can’t manage it, not even with our newly found crude oil status.
If we are to continue on this path of excessive population growth (uncontrolled, encouraged, praised, expected, prayed over), if we continue cranking up the baby-making machine and each of us consider having a baby as the main reason for which God made us – just to populate the earth – then by Ghana’s centenary celebration in 2057, this land will be choked with people.
Even if our population does not quadruple like it did from independence until now but just doubles, there would be about fifty million people on this small land (238,533 sq km – 92,098 sq miles). Fact: The size of our land will not increase. It is reducing. The Atlantic Ocean continues to claim some of our land so by 2057, we would have less land.
A country’s population must be planned; it should not be left to grow organically. What is troubling in the arena of Ghana’s population growth is that it has not just been placed on auto pilot, but that it receives extraordinary encouragement. I dare say that child-making is the one single aspect of our national life that receives the most encouragement than any other.
Baby-Making Obsession:
Baby-making has become a big time business in our country. It is an obsession. It is driven by desperation. It is a life or death endeavour. For women who experience difficulty in getting pregnant, they easily move into a full-time pursuit, with nothing spared.
Desperate women go to unthinkable places and lengths in pursuit of miracle pregnancies. They visit churches, Mallams, fetish priests, drug peddlers, hospitals and anything that propagates hope in their hot pursuits for children. Their lives literally pause, rudely interrupted, while in search of a baby.
Ghana’s population has therefore been left inside churches and prayer camps over intense prayer and fasting. Churches even spring up and operate successfully with baby-making miracle works as the main agenda as if that was the reason Jesus came.
Our society is so unforgiving of people who do not have children. They are looked down upon; they are openly disregarded and gossiped about. They are adjudged failures in life.
Enduring Questions:
Is our culture and super-religiousness creating the obsession for babies, and the urge to have one’s own womb/groin child as against adoption? But must everyone have a child? Some people are not just cut to be parents. However, owing to cultural and religious pressures, everyone seeks to check out their names at the baby-making factory.
Why did this country abandon the aggressive and successful family planning campaigns of the 1980s? Did we solve our population expansion problems or we decided that population control was unimportant?
Something I learned during my school journey is that when you embark on a campaign to effect behavioural change and you stop, progress made does not remain constant. Rather, retrogression can set in and push you into a state worse than the start point of the campaign.
Any successes gained from the family planning campaigns of the 1980s have been mercilessly bombarded and effectively squashed and destroyed at the altar of religious promotion of child birth.
Do we need to embark on a cultural change campaign? Isn’t it about time we embarked on a very aggressive family planning and baby reduction campaigns? Yes, it is past time.
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