Population policies and challenges in the Sahel

John May, World Bank Group

Support for family planning in Francophone Africa, including most countries in the Sahel, has lagged behind the support seen in the East African countries. This is changing, but not fast enough. Many of Africa’s high fertility societies are patriarchal, polygamous, and practice child marriage. Contraceptive prevalence is low and all the countries of the Sahel, except Ethiopia, make abortion illegal. The policy changes and budgets needed to slow rapid population growth in rapidly growing countries need to be framed as a central and inescapable component of any successful development agenda.