The population of Africa in 1977 is estimated to be 423 million, which is about 10.3 percent of the world population. For a quarter of the world’s land area, that is a small population.
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Sources: Willcox, Durand, United Nations, PRB.
Africa’s share of world population declined between 1650 and 1920, partly because the population of Europe and the Americas was increasing gradually through factors associated with the Industrial Revolution, and partly because of the ravages of the slave trade and the European colonial pacification measures. Since the 1920s, however, Africa’s population has been growing fast, and its share of world population could reach 13 percent by the year 2000.