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Why Having A Large Population Isn't A Good Thing, (After years of…
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After years of trying to conceive, Foyeke Omage and her husband, Ewanle, welcomed
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strain. Although quintuplets are extremely rare, Nigeria’s total fertility rate is more than
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With 224 million people, Nigeria is Africa's most populous country. By 2050, it could crack
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the global population passing eight billion, National Geographic photographer Yagazie
Emezi describes scenes she captured in Lagos, Africa’s biggest city—including intimate
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prenatal care. Plus, a Nigerian demographer explains how the country's soaring birth rate
could make it an economic powerhouse, but only if the country finds new ways to invest
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YAGAZIE EMEZI (PHOTOGRAPHER): When I first got this assignment, I think my first
thought was, Oh no, how am I going to do this?
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Geographic Explorer. Last year Nat Geo asked her to photograph Nigeria’s population,
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EMEZI: You know, I've spent the majority of my life in Nigeria, but I haven't experienced
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GWIN: Nigeria is home to hundreds of different ethnic groups and languages, but the
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counting, Lagos isn’t just the largest city in Nigeria. It’s the biggest in Africa. Yagazie
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EMEZI: I grew up in the south of Nigeria. It's like, coming to Lagos for the first time, I was
taken aback. I was like, Wow, this is—even as an adult, you know? I was like, This is a
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GWIN: In fact, when I reached Yagazie, she was in a setting that’s familiar to city-dwellers
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EMEZI: Very, very overpriced. I am very bitter about it. I will not be coming back here.
GWIN: So I haven't been to Lagos myself, but I've heard it’s a city of stark contrasts. You
have super wealth and skyscrapers and super-modern architecture in some places, and
then you have, you know, extreme poverty in other places. Tell me a little bit—can you
give me a little, like, when you landed there and you started exploring the city, you know,
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airplane into the un-air-conditioned airport. You might get stopped by customs, who will
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ask you for some money. But you go outside, and you see the traffic. You see, you know,
the standard yellow buses, the conductors, you know, hanging out of the buses or
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world—with more than 220 million people. In just a few decades, Nigeria is on course to
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world’s largest city by the end of the century. So what’s driving the baby boom, and is
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I’m Peter Gwin, editor at large at National Geographic, and this is Overheard: a show
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to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world.
As the world population passes eight billion, we’re focusing on women in two countries
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And in a country where the median age is 17, the energy of its youthful population could
make it an economic powerhouse, but only if its leaders make the right moves.
That’s all coming up. But first, fuel your curiosity with a free one-month trial subscription to
Nat Geo Digital. You’ll have unlimited access on any device, anywhere, ad-free with our
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ever, and the number’s going up. The UN predicts that later this century, we could reach
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Africa. In fact, between now and 2050, that’s where two-thirds of the world’s population
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By 2050, Nigeria could squeeze nearly 400 million people into a country roughly one-
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like with Yagazie Emezi, I wanted a better understanding of what’s causing it.
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AKANNI AKINYEMI (DEMOGRAPHER): Well, first to say that, yes, the population is
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AKINYEMI: For instance, you look into what we demographers call the total fertility rate,
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AKINYEMI: Yeah, that's the average.
GWIN: Almost 20 years ago, the Nigerian government tried to curb the fertility rate. It
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when it comes to the decision to have kids, Akanni says that many Nigerians lack access
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contraceptives. So when you have it low like that, again there will be problems because it
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know, studies have also shown that people who are poorly educated, people who are
poor and who also live in rural areas, they are people who are disproportionately affected
—I mean having more babies than other people. So you therefore need to look into, how
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do you therefore invest in such areas to improve the quality of life? Also to improve, you
know, their negotiation power, you know, so that then they can negotiate better. So they
know this is when, this is how I want to have babies.
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know, I'm thinking specifically of a place like China that's taken the, you know, the famous
one-child policy. Could you see Nigeria ever sort of taking on something massive like that,
some sort of massive, you know, policy to try to, you know, manage the growth in a really
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AKINYEMI: You know, the political economy atmosphere in China and Nigeria are not just
comparable, but that doesn't mean that government cannot make things to happen. But
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a woman have like high school completed, because of the time you spend to have that
high school, you are not likely to be like a young girl who started having children at 14
because, you know, you stay in school till 18. And if that same lady now go for higher
education, right, maybe you go to university or you go to college, then you'll be there until
like 23, and you don't want to start having children. So that makes a whole lot of
difference, and so government can therefore look into that and see how to improve.
GWIN: Nigeria's population is very young, and you've written that that means a big
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needs to do to kind of harness all this potential, this young potential?
AKINYEMI: You look into government investment, for instance, into higher education
because if you invest in things where young people can have skills, OK, then you are
investing in them to be economically viable, and they are also likely to bring the desired
outcome because then, you know, you are better off than someone who is not working.
So if you make right investment for people who are highly skilled in communication, highly
skilled in medicine, they are likely to compete favorably well globally. And they’re likely to
have good return. So government need to prioritize, you know, investment in these young
people, deliberate investment in key sectors, you know, to help these young people.
GWIN: So I hear you talking a lot about what Nigeria could do, but how is the country
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AKINYEMI: I think, honestly, I think the country is not doing well. You look into the cost of
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young people, making the wrong kind of investment, you know? Last year, universities
were shut for like eight months. That does not show right investments, right, in education.
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GWIN: When I reached Akanni, Nigeria was a week away from its presidential elections.
He said none of the candidates were talking about these issues, although he did point out
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Also this year, Nigeria is planning its first census in more than 15 years. Censuses aren’t
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crucial for planning. But Akanni has written that in the past, Nigeria’s censuses have
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Meanwhile, population change on a scale this large can be hard to get your head around.
It involves hundreds of millions of people and huge issues like government, health care,
and education. It’s a tough story to boil down to just a few photographs, but last year that
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EMEZI: Ideally everything. When it—because Nigeria has to be with population, you
know, you want your country to be a functioning country. So what makes a country
function as—also as imperfect as Nigeria is? And I think definitely with agriculture,
housing, and education, those were the main ones because you see it every day in
Nigeria. You know, you see people who do not have access to food, or the right type of
food. You know, you see children who are on the streets who are not educated or being
put in school. So these are the tough ones. It's just like, what have I always seen in
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diverse country. It's got so many different ethnic groups, so many different languages,
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EMEZI: What is so great about a place like Nigeria, even looking at Lagos alone, is that
once I focused on these different sectors—be it housing, be it health—is that it is diverse,
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was any place that—or any of the images that represents just one group of people, be it
of a certain class, be it of a certain ethnicity. And I think that also speaks really well of
Nigeria, that you can focus on these large things and focus on these sectors and still find
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about, like, how you approached trying to photograph health care and how that related to
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EMEZI: So with health care, I wanted to look at the mortality rate of infants.
GWIN: Infant mortality is a key indicator of a society’s overall health, and Nigeria’s infant
mortality rate is trending down. In the past 30 years, it’s been cut nearly in half. But in
international rankings, it remains one of the worst. The rate of maternal mortality—that is,
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Today less than half of Nigerian babies are born in hospitals, and many expectant
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position, and sometimes that means having to turn the baby in the womb. So yes, it was
bearing witness to that, and it was incredible to watch but also quite honestly a bit
uncomfortable because you're also watching someone who is in discomfort, which is, you
know, the pregnant ladies, but then also to watch the relief. And, you know, the midwife
works—you know, she's been working for over 30 years at this. So you know just by
watching her hands and she's just chatting with me, telling me what she's doing. She's
like massaging their bellies and moving it around. Yeah, it was just really great to watch
that aspect of her process and also just hear about the fact that, you know, she's never
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GWIN: Women that have more education delay having children longer, and that has an
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EMEZI: With women education, I definitely wanted to represent, you know, the Muslim
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GWIN: As Akanni mentioned earlier, investing in education is one of the keys to
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Nigerian kids between the ages of 6 and 11 don’t go to school regularly. And for girls, the
number is even higher, especially in rural areas in northern Nigeria. The Islamic militant
group Boko Haram has attacked schools, like in 2014, when it kidnapped more than 200
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a chance. We see eight girls posing together in a hallway, all wearing hijabs at an Islamic
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EMEZI: I cannot, you know, have all these images and not have this aspect represented
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Islamic institution that can also keep the balance of both, which also speaks in terms of
diversity and two things, you know, existing harmoniously at the same time.
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Can you tell me a little bit about how you found that family, and what that photograph says
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fantastic. I spent a lot of time talking to the husband. He's a trader. And they were just, I
mean—like really any other family. The time I came initially, the kids had—they were still
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like, Why are you here? Why are you taking pictures?
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Mom, dad, and four kids sprawled out on their bed, mostly with big smiles.
EMEZI: You know, there's always this underbelly of—when in Nigeria, at least in my
experience, when you witness cases of like joy and all these genuine moments of love
and the underbelly is there's no electricity, you know, or they have to step out for a bit to
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bed is there. I'm not saying that things are easy, but at the end of the day is, these things
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most about the photograph is that you can see the joy. However, you can see the
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know, was this just sort of a temporary situation they were in, or \were they expecting
things to get better, to get a better place, et cetera?
EMEZI: When I asked him about, you know, just living at home, he had already been
there for about 11 years, I believe, So that really kind of like spoke to the possibility of
kind of like getting out, especially when, you know, you have to pay for school fees and
sending the kids to a private school. His main complaint was, you know, that it's just really
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family in the best of ways. So there was no talk about, Oh, you know, it's difficult for us to
send the kids to school, or, you know, there was nothing like that. It was just like the kids
go to school. The kids are eating, they have to schedule, they have homework to do, and
we’ll be going to work, right? And I think that's just—that's their reality.
GWIN: You know, the population predictions for Nigeria are pretty staggering. On the very
highest end, I think 80 years from now, they're projected to have 800 million people and
predict that Lagos could be the biggest city in the world, I mean potentially. As a Nigerian,
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EMEZI: Ooh. Honestly it is scary just because once again, I live in Lagos and I see the
crowds. Like, whatever Nigerian I am, I'm just like, It will get better! It has to. For me
personally, it's that I just have hope. I hope we have better governance. I hope we have
way better leadership that can secure the nation, that can feed the nation, that can
educate the nation. These are the main things. And I think that with the right leadership,
we're good. But all we can do is to hope and vote and as individuals, you know, just do
our own parts with helping our neighbors and all that other stuff. Because quite honestly, I
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