Senegal is growing in population, but its birth rate is falling. These are the conclusions of the latest census by the National Agency for Statistics and Demography published this week. In 2002, the population was just under 10 million. Today, there are 18 million inhabitants. Life expectancy has jumped by 4 years in 10 years, reaching 68.9 years in 2023. On the other hand, the birth rate has continued to decline steadily for 30 years.
2 min
With our correspondent in Dakar, Juliette Dubois
The women of the Senegal had 6.4 children on average in 1986, 5.3 in 2002 and more than 4.2 in 2023. The first factor that comes into play is the birth rate. girls’ education which is constantly increasing.
Djiby Diakhaté is a professor of sociology at Cheikh-Anta-Diop University (UCAD) and a member of a working group on the birth control.
Many young women, once they get married, think deep down that they can’t afford to have many children. They think about a career, they think about their health. They also think about family stability.
Successive governments have taken up this issue birth control with various communication actions, such as messages on television. Awareness-raising work has also been carried out for about ten years with the “bajenu gox”, the community aunts. This is what Professor Djiby Diakhaté explains:
The aunts of the community are great ladies who have acquired solid experience within households and who accompany women who have recently entered into marriage, in terms of advice. They thus draw their attention to the need to maintain the balance of the family, through a motherhood that is also balanced and controlled.
The legal age of marriage could accentuate this downward trend. For the moment, it is 16 years for girls, but the recent judicial conference proposed to raise it to 18 years for all.
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