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Comment by Aaron_Putnam | Hacker News Reader

GDP per capita change for 2018 was negative for sub-saharan Africa:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?locat...

Be careful what you wish for: economic growth in Africa is going to come directly at the expense of the local and international environment, in the form of land clearance and coal and oil emissions.

Africa desperately needs to stabilise its population, so that it can focus on infrastructure and capital deepening. The West can help by redirecting all food aid instead towards education, contraception and abortion for women.

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1. Could you please explain the connection between economic growth and the population problem a little more?

I would expect economic development to gradually cause a decline in birth rates? Is there a GDP marker where delta GDP > delta population?

As far as overpopulation, the entire continent of Africa has roughly the same population (1.3b) as India with ~9x the land area so the absolute population density is not dire.

2. If you look at carbon emissions per capita, African countries are relatively carbon neutral. Ethiopia relies mostly on renewable energy and they are also building the largest hydroelectric power plant on the continent. I would expect younger economies to “leap frog” to cleaner and greener tech, having polluted less in total (than countries before them) by the time they attain middle income status.

Sounds like a surviving version of Victorian "blame the victim" thinking. It was a popular and heavily flawed idea that the people the British invaded and robbed (of food in many cases), if faced with food shortages, should have just "had less kids".

When a parasite finds a good host, the logic can get really warped.

> The West can help by redirecting all food aid instead towards education, contraception and abortion for women.

This is evil.

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