High Birth Rate Threatens to Wipe Out Africa’s Modest Gains in Economic Growth

Elizabeth Mazivire, a 16-year-old mother of three, works in the tobacco barn of a wealthy Zimbabwean farmer to supplement the earnings of her tractor-driver husband.

Her eldest son, Peter, is only 4 years old.

Weary, and looking far older than her age, Elizabeth says she “accidentally fell pregnant” at 12 and since then has continued having accidental pregnancies by her 20-year-old husband, Jonathan.

She is one of thousands of Zimbabwean women who, either because they do not know about contraceptives or have no access to them, end up having more children than planned.

Zimbabwe, with only 9 million people in a country the size of France, hardly ranks as overcrowded. But here, as almost everywhere in Africa, a high birth rate is threatening to wipe out modest gains from economic growth.

Zimbabwe and neighboring Botswana have been spotlighted by the World Bank as the only two countries in sub-Saharan Africa where vigorous government efforts to promote family planning are starting to show results.

About 40% of Zimbabwean couples now use contraceptives--about 10 times the African average, according to the World Bank. Only Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island not typical of Africa, scores higher, with 78%.

Even so, Zimbabwe is still fighting an uphill battle against the African tradition of large families.

Between 1980 and 1987 the net population growth was 3.7%, although the latest figures show a drop to 2.9%. World Bank statistics show that as recently as 1988, the average Zimbabwean woman could expect to give birth to five children in her lifetime.

Population growth has far outpaced Zimbabwe’s annual average economic growth rate of 2.4% since independence in 1980, according to World Bank statistics.

This has led to an average drop in the per capita gross domestic product of 1.3% a year, with falling living standards, growing unemployment and increased pressure on social services.

In much of Africa the figures are far worse. World Bank projections foresee a doubling of the continent’s population to 1 billion in the next 30 years, and at the moment only 3% to 4% of couples use contraception.

In Zimbabwe accidental pregnancies are most prevalent among schoolgirls who, for moral reasons, are barred by the authorities from freely obtaining contraceptives like their married and adult counterparts.

But teen-agers and couples who do not use any form of modern contraception for cultural, religious and other reasons are now the main targets of a state-backed family planning program.

The Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council has expanded its activities since independence to almost every town and has established a rural network in which contraceptives are given freely to couples and unmarried adults.

“We are the nerve center of the country’s population control strategy,” said a spokeswoman of the council, which gets 70% of its funds from the government.

The council holds lectures for couples on why and how to space their children and counseling sessions for young people on the consequences of early marriage.

However, the campaign to persuade families to have fewer children has yet to reach every corner of the country, particularly isolated rural areas where 80% of Zimbabwe’s population lives.

Elizabeth, for example, despite living on a farm only 40 miles from the capital, said she had never heard of contraceptives until “a few weeks ago, when I went to Harare for specialized medical treatment.”

“I wish I knew there was this (contraceptives) and I think I couldn’t have fallen pregnant in the first place and I could have been in school now,” she said with a wry smile.

Rural families, who rely on children to work on their farms, have an average of eight children. Before the advent of modern medical care, infant mortality encouraged women to have a large number of pregnancies to ensure that several children survived.