In recent years, the demographic dividend has garnered enormous traction in African policy circles, and leaders and policymakers have begun to see it as a strategy for achieving their economic growth targets.

Today, Africa has the world’s highest fertility rates. On average, women in sub-Saharan Africa have about five children over their reproductive lifetime, compared to a global average of 2.5 children. Research shows that the “demographic transition,” the name for the change from high death and fertility rates to lower death and eventually lower fertility rates, has proceeded differently here from other regions in the developing world.