— “Many in position of power think the world has become overpopulated recently, and Africa takes the center of attention because of the constant increase in population” — “European countries are nowadays giving incentives to their women to give birth to more babies. Yet, an already underpopulated continent, Africa is crowded with Western ‘experts’ giving money to NGOs and governments to stop the population growth” — “The debate about the world overpopulation should not be about headcount, but about a single individual’s impact on the environment, and it is necessary to recalculate the ‘overpopulation factor’ based on those parameters” Last month in Paris, a conference gathered a panel of white people to think about more effective ways to reduce black population in Africa. One of the conference organizers, a historian and Associate Professor of African history, Bernard Lugan, said: “Population growth in Africa is a threat to European civilization … I’m not recommending to drop a nuclear bomb on Africa, but we can’t wait to see that population growth next to Europe. It’s a danger we have to take seriously.” Their plan is to syndicate more closely private and public organizations in Western countries to provide money and logistics for faster and more effective actions to curb the ‘frightening’ African population growth. This is just surreal, but let’s take a calmer road to answer the fundamental question behind such conferences and the numerous similar initiatives in Europe and the United States: is Africa overpopulated? First, what is overpopulation? Overpopulation is an array of negative social and ecological impacts caused by increasing competition between individuals or groups due to the increasing scarcity of resources. The scarcity could be caused either by decreasing resources of water, food and other life necessities because of a growing population, or by overconsumption of those resources due to unhealthy lifestyle or economical ideology. Put simply, overpopulation is caused either by limited resources not enough to sustain the ever-growing population, or by overconsumption due to unhealthy lifestyle. The debate on the world overpopulation has been ongoing for over 150 years. Many in position of power think the world has become overpopulated recently, and Africa takes the center of attention because of the constant increase in population. Often, the people behind the Africa overpopulation debate would produce shiny graphics and complex MBA types of matrix that look very convincing, and indeed would trick people not familiar with the issues …
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