By BERNADINE MUTANU

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Sub-saharan Africa’s population continues to grow steadily, at 2.5 times faster than the rest of the world, thanks to reduced mortality rates, increased fertility levels and international migration.

According to the 2019 United Nation’s World Population Prospects Report, the region’s population is projected to increase from 1.06 billion in 2019 to 1.4 billion in 2030 and 2.12 billion in 2050.

And by 2050, while Tanzania will be among the nine countries (including DR Congo, Ethiopia, and Egypt) expected to add the most people in the world, Nigeria will be the most populous in sub-Saharan Africa but second most in the world after India (with 273 million added people) with projections showing that it will add 200 million people to the world population.

The report says the sub-Saharan Africa region has grown at an average 2.3 per cent annually from 2015.

The projection shows that its countries combined will add over one billion people and “could account for more than half of the growth of the world’s population between 2019 and 2050.”

The continent’s population is projected to continue growing through the end of the century. This is against a world population growth projection of 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.9 billion in 2100, according to the medium-variant projection.

By 2062, sub-Saharan Africa population is projected to surpass all other eight Sustainable Development Goals regions, including East and South-East Asia and Central and South Asia in size.

The report states that reduced mortality rates resulted in projected gains in life expectancy in all countries and regions.