ICAEW chart of the week: Africa

I take a look at Africa this week and how its current population of 1.5bn, 18% of the world’s total, is distributed across the continent.

Map of Africa's 1.5bn people with countries coloured into five regions, overlayed by semi-transparent scaled bubbles with the population of each region.

Teal: Western Africa 435m.
Orange: Northern Africa 221m.
Green: Central Africa 178m.
Purple: Southern Africa 198m.
Blue: Eastern Africa 428m.

My chart this week illustrates how Africa’s population of 1,460m can be divided into five regions. These comprise Western Africa with 435m people, Northern Africa with 221m, Central Africa with 178m, Southern Africa with 198m, and Eastern Africa with 428m. 

These regions are based on the African Union’s official regions for its 55 member states, which differ from the regions used by the United Nations. They include Réunion (1.0m) and Mayotte (0.3m), two French overseas territories in the Indian Ocean that are not members of the African Union, as well as St Helena (5,000), an overseas territory of the UK in the Atlantic. It also includes an estimated 5.8m people living in African Union applicant Somaliland that are included within the number for Somalia.

Excluded are 175,000 or so people living on the African continent in Ceuta and Melilla (Spain), around 2.2m and 250,000 respectively in the Atlantic Ocean on the Canary Islands (Spain) and Madeira (Portugal), and several hundred people in the Indian Ocean within France’s Southern Territories.

The table below breaks down the total by country within each region, highlighting how the four largest countries by population each have more than 100m people, led by Nigeria with 223.8m (15.3% of Africa’s total), Ethiopia with 126.5m (8.7%), Egypt with 112.7m (7.7%) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with 102.3m (7.0%). 

The next largest are Tanzania with 67.4m (4.6%), South Africa with 60.4m (4.1%), Kenya with 55.1m (3.8%), Uganda with 48.6m (3.3%), Sudan with 48.1m (3.3%), Algeria with 45.6m (3.1%), Morocco with 37.8m (2.6%), Angola with 36.7m (2.5%), Ghana with 34.1m (2.3%), Mozambique with 33.9m (2.3%), Madagascar with 30.3m (2.1%) and Côte d’Ivoire with 28.9m (2.0%).

Table showing populations by each region:

Western Africa 435m: Nigeria 223.8m, Ghana 34.1m, Côte d'Ivoire 28.9m, Niger 27.2m, Mali 23.3m, Burkina Faso 23.3m, Senegal 17.7m, Guinea 14.2m, Benin 13.7m, Togo 9.1m, Sierra Leone 8.9m, Liberia 5.4m, Gambia 2.8m, Guinea-Bissau 2.2m, Cabo Verde 0.6m, St Helena (UK) 0.0m.

Northern Africa 221m: Egypt 112.7m, Algeria 45.6m, Morocco 37.8m, Tunisia 12.5m, Libya 6.9m, Mauritania 4.9m, Western Sahara 0.6m.

Central Africa 178m: DR Congo 102.3m, Cameroon 28.6m, Chad 13.2m, Congo 6.1m, Central African Republic 5.7m, Gabon 2.4m, Equatorial Guinea 1.7m, São Tomé and Principe 0.2m.

Southern Africa 198m: South Africa 60.4m, Angola 36.7m, Mozambique 33.9m, Malawi 20.9m, Zambia 20.6m, Zimbabwe 16.7m, Botswana 2.7m, Namibia 2.6m, Lesotho 2.3m, Eswatini 1.2m.

Eastern Africa 428m: Ethiopia 126.5m, Tanzania 67.4m, Kenya 55.1m, Uganda 48.6m, Sudan 48.1m, Madagascar 30.3m, Somalia 18.1m, Rwanda 14.1m, South Sudan 11.1m, Eritrea 3.7m, Mauritius 1.3m, Djibouti 1.1m, Réunion (FR) 1.0m, Comoros 0.9m, Mayotte (FR) 0.3m, Seychelles 0.1m.

The population of Africa is expected to grow significantly over the rest of the century, with the UN’s medium variant projecting a population of 1.7bn (20% of the projected global total) in 2030, 2.1bn in 2040 (23%), 2.5bn (26%) in 2050, 2.9bn (28%) in 2060, 3.2bn (31%) in 2070, 3.5bn (34%) in 2080, 3.7bn (36%) in 2090 and 3.9bn (38%) in 2100. This is despite a rapidly declining birth rate, with many more Africans living much longer lives than preceding generations.

Africa is currently relatively poor compared with advanced economies, with the total GDP for its 55 countries and 1.5bn people close in size to the UK’s single country GDP for 67.5m people of around £2.5trn a year at current exchange rates. This is around 3% of the global economy in each case. 

The UK’s share of the global economy is likely to decline over the rest of the century as Africa and other developing economies grow at a much faster pace. For Africa the combination of a rapidly growing population and economic development should see it become substantially more significant to the global economy than it is today.

This chart was originally published by ICAEW.

ICAEW chart of the week: The global vaccination challenge

This week’s chart looks at how much progress there has been in vaccinating an estimated global population of 7.8bn people, and how much is left to be done.

Chart showing vaccination status across Europe, North America, China, India, Rest of Asia, Africa and South America. (See text below for details).

According to Our World in Data as of 15 June 2021, 727m people are fully vaccinated, 884m are partly vaccinated and 3,847 are not yet vaccinated, based on a target of 70% of a world population of 7,795m.

With a vaccination target of 70% needed to prevent the further spread of the virus, we need to vaccinate just under 5.5bn people. So far, only 727m (9% of the global population) have been fully vaccinated, mostly in China (223m), North America (169m) and Europe (158m).

Only relatively small numbers have been fully vaccinated in India (47m), the rest of Asia (73m), South America & Oceania (46m) and Africa (11m). A further 884m (11%) have been partly vaccinated, comprising China (399m), India (156m), Europe (111m), rest of Asia (73m), North America (67m), South America & Oceania (59m) and Africa (19m).

This leaves 3,847m people (49%) yet to be vaccinated, with 1,128m in Asia excluding China and India, 909m in Africa, 763m in India, 386m in China, 255m in Europe, 227m in South America and 179m in North America.

At the current run rate of around 33m vaccinations a day and assuming two doses are needed for each person, it should in theory take around 260 days or just under nine months to deliver the 8.5bn remaining doses needed. With some vaccinations requiring only one dose and expanded manufacturing capacity, the potential is that the world could be vaccinated even sooner than that.

In practice, it will not be so easy. The current level of vaccinations is being driven by China, which is vaccinating around 16m of its population a day at the moment, and whether many countries in the rest of Asia and Africa can get up to proportionately similar levels is not certain. Many countries will struggle to afford the vaccines they need and the 1bn doses just announced by the G7 will only go so far. Logistically, there are some big challenges in getting vaccines into arms in many parts of the world.

That is why some are saying that it will take until the end of 2022 to fully vaccinate the 70% of people needed to protect against the virus. Let’s hope that they are just being cautious, and the momentum can be maintained to get the world vaccinated even sooner than that.

Source: Our World in Data COVID-19 dataset extracted on 15 June 2021 – Mathieu, E., Ritchie, H., Ortiz-Ospina, E. et al. A global database of COVID-19 vaccinations. Nat Hum Behav (2021).

This chart was originally published by ICAEW.