Population Ageing and Care of the Elderly: What Are the Lessons of Asia for Sub-Saharan Africa?

The population age structures of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are among the youngest in the world. It is estimated that by the year 2000, 45 per cent of the SSA population would be below the age of 15, as compared with 33 per cent in South-East Asia, which has started its demographic transition much earlier. But fertility has started to decline in several SSA countries. Kenya, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa and Côte d’Ivoire have experienced moderate to large declines in fertility with smaller declines occurring in Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Ghana, Mauritania, Senegal and Sierra Leone (Cohen, 1998). This trend is going to continue and will be repeated in other SSA countries, whose population by the middle of the twenty-first century will stabilise at replacement level. Other developing countries in Asia and Latin America have started their demographic transition earlier, and their population, particularly in South and South-East Asia, will reach replacement level by the first quarter of the twenty-first century (see Table 6.1).