We have all ,no doubt, heard about the problem of overpopulation in Africa. That is what we hear implicitly and explicitly on the News , in the movies , in our schools and even at International gatherings.

So all the challenges and difficulties being experienced in the Continent is easily and lazily blamed or tied to overpopulation .
If only the African women would have less babies, if only their fertility rate was lower , if only the prevalence of contraceptive-usage was higher, if only legalised abortion was available in every African country , if only the Africans would opt for the small-family model , then the problem of overpopulation in Africa can be solved and so would ALL the other difficulties . This is the pervasive attitude towards Africa -that overpopulated part of the world where problems abound.
And on this note , many organizations and philanthropists have set out to “down-size” or rather “right-size” Africa through their heavily-funded family planning programs unleashed on the African population.

And as their urgency increases , their voices grow louder and their family planning summits get bigger , they continue to give many peoplearound the world the impression that Africa is a tiny territory with too many people living in it and scrambling for basic resources .
Unfortunately , this message is beginning to resonate with so many well-meaning ordinary people (like you and I), coupled with the very negative international press coverage of Africa featuring accentuated images of poverty , hunger, disease, famine and drought .

So today might be a good time to take a look at the map of Africa and compare (really compare) its size to the rest of the world .
Here is a special map of Africa designed by Software expert Kai Krause .
In it he compares the true size of Africa to the true size of other parts of the world . And one can easily see that Africa is so much bigger than most of us ever realized .
Yes , it is possible to fit into the African landmass – all of China , India, Japan, Eastern Europe, USA , Italy, Switzerland , Nertherlands, Belgium, Spain, France and Germany . As for the United Kingdom and Ireland …well they can be fit very nicely into Madagascar – yes, the small island country off the east coast of Africa !
Kai’s design was of course criticized by many population control enthusiasts and scrutinized by various experts , even the Economist published an article on it , and they all eventually agreed that this is an accurate comparison .
So WHY WHY WHY are the population control proponents still insistent on sterilizing and de-populating Africa ? Why are they pushing the image of Africa as that of a tiny village with too many people living in it ? Africa is a great Continent with so much potentials, talents and resources.
What we need are the right tools of authentic development that will not include sterilization or de-population .