Elderly people follow proceedings during the launch of Inua Jamii 70 and
Above Cash Transfer Programme at Mweiga stadium in Nyeri county on July
5, 2017. file photo | nmg
One little noted aspect of the recent UN
World Population report was that Africa is likely to see a huge rise in
the number of older people by the end of this century.
According
to the latest UN report, the number of persons aged 60 or above in
Africa is expected to rise from five per cent in 2017 to around nine per
cent in 2050, and then to nearly 20 per cent by the end of the century.
With rapidly increasing population rates across
Africa — by 2050 more than half of the global population growth will
come from sub-Saharan Africa — this means African governments will not
only have to support policies that enable massive employment creation
across the region, but they will also eventually have to cater for
increasing numbers of elderly people, Life expectancy in Kenya is
projected to increase from 54 years today to 68 years by 2050.
The
good news is that as a result of these trends, the fastest growing
population groups in Kenya are 15 to 64 years — “and these are exactly
the population groups that work,” according to Wolfgang Fengler, Lead
Economist for the World Bank in Kenya. From only 22 million working-age
people today, Kenya by 2050 will have about 56 million working-age
people. The World Bank argues that in the short to medium term this will
benefit Kenya because of the so-called “demographic dividend.”
This
is because as fertility declines and people live longer, Kenyans will
see a dramatic improvement in the “dependency ratio”: This means the
proportion of the working-age population will grow much faster than the
young and elderly population groups that depend on them. But the report
says that compared to 2017, the number of persons aged 60 or above is
expected to more than double by 2050.
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