More than half of the global population growth until 2050 is expected to occur in Africa, the United Nations projects.
The continent has the highest rate of population growth, hitting a pace of 2.55 percent annually between 2010 and 2015.
According to the U.N., a rapid population hike is expected in Africa despite a projected substantial reduction in fertility levels in the near future.
The agency says Africa has a large population of young people who will reach adulthood in the years ahead and have children of their own, ensuring that the continent plays a big role in shaping the size of the world’s population.
After Africa, Asia is expected to be the second largest contributor to future global population growth. The continent is expected to experience a population hike reaching 0.9 billion between 2015 and 2050.
In total, the world’s population is expected to increase by more than one billion within the next 15 years, reaching 8.7 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100.
The current world population stands at over 7.3 billion people, according to the UN Population Division.
The rise in the world’s population has been attributed to an increasing number of people surviving to reproductive age, accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanization and accelerating migration.
These trends are expected to still have far-reaching implications for generations to come.
The UN Population Division says sixty per cent of the global population lives in Asia (4.4 billion), 16 per cent in Africa (1.2 billion), 10 per cent in Europe (738 million), 9 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean (634 million), and the remaining 5 per cent in Northern America (358 million) and Oceania (39 million).
China (1.4 billion) and India (1.3 billion) remain the two largest countries of the world, both with more than 1 billion people, representing 19 and 18 per cent of the world’s population, respectively.
