When does our population growth become an economic debate?

All across the globe it is becoming undeniably clear that the world is filling up with humans. You see it when you look from the corner of your eye – there are way more people than you would previously see – but if you fancy figures and numbers, census reports equally point to a similar fact.
One figure that startled me as I attended a population debate last week was that it took tens of thousands of years to get to 1 billion people but it has taken 200 years to make seven times that – 7.6 billion.
Of course, the fact that people are engaging in reproductive activities isn’t in question. What is though, is the global debate on the economics of growing populations.

On the one hand, it can be argued that an increasing population provides the much needed labour required to propel countries into industry and there after capitalist success. This is the journey of China, India and even the United States.
But on the other hand, robust populations struggling for meagre resources are also a source of poverty, disease and catastrophic social welfare. This is also the story of Nigeria – the poverty capital of the world and even Pakistan.
That some countries are rich and populated doesn’t mean that they automatically are successful – in fact, many aren’t. Populous but rich countries are struggling with growing income inequalities; poor or reduced access to basic social services like health and education; and resource constraints like land.

Which brings me to my fundamental question on which way Uganda should take.
Uganda has some 40 million people. They grow at a rate of 3.7 per cent each year. Undeterred, it won’t take us long to get to 100 million people.
The country is already struggling to afford basic social services for each of its 40 million people including education, health, water etc. The coterie of debates on how to spur the economy and make Uganda a better place could easily amount to nothing if the population growth is not nipped in the bud.
For every one per cent of GDP growth we record, half of it goes towards catering to the budding population that comes with the year.
It gets worse for Uganda because 55 per cent of the national population is below 18 years and falls into the dependency category.

There is thus, a method to the madness in the people calling for a robust look at access to family planning services – or sexual and reproductive health information.
Majority of this debate has been a health debate zeroing in mostly on the nitty gritty of when young people should access family planning education, and how contraceptives should be given to whom. I have seen some of the most attractive campaigns on this coming from Reach A Hand Uganda.
The other coin of the debate is the one on information. More and more young people need to appreciate that sexual decisions are economic and life decisions.
The three drivers of Uganda’s population are low access to family planning information, teenage pregnancy and low contraceptive use. If we worried about how our young people make their decisions on sex, we’d have far less time to worry about the economy.