Lauren Dawson
12/8/08
Population Analysis of Niger
Niger is located smack dab in the middle of the Sahara. It is a hot, dry and dusty desert area lacking of natural vegetation with .01% of land use being used for crops. It is preposterous that Niger being slightly less than twice the size of Texas with total land area of 1.276 million square kilometers has only 730 square kilometers of irrigated land. Their history of unstable government once being ruled by France and now messily becoming a democratic country kept on a leash by military rule, has lead them to be very poor. In fact Niger is one of the poorest countries in the whole world with few if not no government services and a serious lack of funds or base for the country to thrive off of. It is very ironic that the poorest countries are the most populous. Niger has a population of 13,272,679 people and growing at a rate of 2.878%. It will only take Niger about 15 years to double its population. Even though death rates are high at 20.26 deaths/1,000 population its birthrate is a lot higher at 49.62 births/1,000 population. These facts leading to the known path Niger will take, with their population exploding and no resources to back it up. Niger does harbor many natural resources like uranium, coal, iron ore, tin, phosphates, gold, molybdenum, gypsum, salt, petroleum; but many of these resources were sold along time ago to other countries by one country that was immature and lacked the knowledge and capability to utilize these resources to their full advantage now leaving Niger like the rest of Africa with no way to support itself. Since most citizens can’t even afford food most the time how would they ever afford education? Nigerians have to use the very little money they have for the less than bare necessities for their country and cannot use it wisely with their militarily run government so their percent of GDP used for education is at a devastating 3.4%. Throughout a male’s life in Niger he will only receive four years, if that, of education and a woman will receive only three years if she is lucky. The Literacy rate shows their true lack of education, especially women ,with percent of males literate being 42.9% and 15.1% of women being literate. If women are this illiterate and uneducated in the most basic of knowledge it is obvious they must know nothing about sexual education with much of America still in the dark about practicing safe sex. Without the access to of even knowledge of condoms and birth control almost all sexual practices are without any protection to prevent the spread of diseases and stop the overwhelming population from further development. AIDS like in many countries in Africa is spreading like wild fire because of the poverty these mass amount of people live in and the constant tribal and military battles leading to way too many rapes. Because of this chaos AIDS is spreading unchecked and Niger is no exception. Niger has 70,000 people living with Aids and 4,800 who have died. But Aids is not the only disease spreading because of Niger’s situation of poverty, the risk for many other diseases is very high there like; bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, typhoid fever, malaria, and meningococcal meningitis. With all these diseases and the lack of development to be able to obtain sufficient medicine to treat it the infant mortality rate is 115.42 infant deaths/1,000 live births. This is why the population continues to soar along with the lack of education. Because disease often takes over many families feel the need to have as many children as possible because the chance that one or more will die is almost certain. Also many people of Niger have many children to help with work and farm what little lands the family may own. In many cases in Africa the parents will become very sick leaving the children to support their whole family along with their many siblings. This happens way too often because the life expectancy is 44.28 years. With the parents continuing to have children not far from this age when they die the young ones must be taken care of by siblings. With all these children being born the population is booming out of control using up the few resources Nigerians have access to; environmental issues facing this country are overgrazing; soil erosion; deforestation; desertification; wildlife populations (such as elephant, hippopotamus, giraffe, and lion) threatened because of poaching and habitat destruction. Because of their lack to support themselves they have more children then because of all these children the resources dwindle, this is a vicious cycle seen by too many countries in the world. Because of the constant struggle these people have to go through they don’t seem to have too much time to become the social class like we are in America. Without a stable government to support them the society is restless and gangs are formed breaking apart society as a whole. With this lack of organization Nigerian people are living much like tribes did centuries ago when it comes to technology. Because of their inability to come together Niger is very much still in the Preindustrial stage of development with high birthrates and death rates.