East African countries like Kenya have made great strides in recent decades in increasing access to modern contraception, leading to marked declines in fertility rates. But disparities remain.

The world is about to hit a “turning point” in maternal and newborn health, said Laura Laski, chief of the sexual and reproductive health at UNFPA, at the Wilson Center on March 23. “In terms of strengthening the new health system for achieving the MDGS or any other goals, we have to focus on the human resources for health.” In particular, midwives.

Sub-Saharan Africa is often characterized as an outlier in terms of population dynamics and reproductive health. While women are having fewer children around the world, even prompting some places to begin worrying about aging populations, the demographic transition is proceeding more slowly in Africa. Fertility rates in North and Southern Africa have declined to around three children per woman, but the three other sub-regions of the continent – East, Central, and West Africa – retain much higher fertility, between five and six children per woman. Whether, and how quickly, fertility rates decline in these regions over the next few decades will in large part determine the peak of world population. These regions’ demographic trajectories also have important implications for health, governance, food security, economic development, land use, climate vulnerability, and even security.

If you were on a mission to improve the plight of humankind, no less, would you care about how many people are living, where they are, and how old they are? You probably would, for it would obviously make it easier for you to estimate the challenge you face. However, the international community did not.

“Alphonse, however, had not come to talk. Without saying a word, he raised a machete and brought it down onto his uncle’s skull.”

For two villages in southern Malawi, climate change and contraception have become intertwined. So much so, that long-held cultural assumptions are starting to change.