Introduction

Development in Africa is not nearly as rapid as hoped for, and development projects are sporadic but not numerous, yet population growth is faster than anywhere else in the world and population redistribution is accelerating more than most countries would wish. The relationships between development and development projects on the one hand and rapid population growth and redistribution on the other are far from simple or stable in a continent with such strong spatial unevenness and heterogeneity of population geography and such remarkable diversity and fragmentation of political geography. Thus, in order to understand these relationships, and how Africa's many countries deal with them or think about them, it is important to consider the demographic background to development.

The bare facts are that with 513 million people (1983) Africa contains about 11 per cent of the world's inhabitants on 22 per cent of its land area and that the number of inhabitants is increasing by about 3 per cent each year – well above the world average of 1.8 per cent – owing to high fertility (the average birth rate is 46 per thousand) and relatively high but declining mortality (about 16 per thousand). The urban population, however, is growing much more quickly (about 7 per cent per annum), sustained by migration from rural areas and small towns to the major cities (Adepoju, 1982). Other pertinent characteristics common to Africa are under-development, polarized development and regional inequality, the inheritance of various forms of colonial domination which have shaped and continue to influence greatly the strategy and patterns of economic development as well as migration and spatial population distribution.