James Isiche
You put your life on the line. The people who come to poach elephants...come with sophisticated weapons. You have to be alert. All the time. But if you take it like a calling, it’s very rewarding.
How Africa’s rising population will impact people and wildlife by 2050
How Africa’s rising population will impact people and wildlife by 2050
James Isiche | February 25, 2025
While Africa’s rapidly rising population—estimated by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa to hit 2.5 billion by 2050—is, on one hand, a celebration of reduced infant mortality and improved life expectancy due to better nutrition and public health care, it is also cause for alarm.
A wildebeest in Amboseli National Park, Kenya. Photo: © Donal Boyd
This explosion, from 283 million people in 1960, raises fears and concerns for the future well-being of African people and the natural resources with which their lives are intricately intertwined. On a continent where rural and urban poverty are glaringly manifest, how will this huge population be employed, fed, transported, and housed? How will their energy, water, and sanitation needs be met? Will these needs be met without irreversibly altering and degrading the environment?
These concerns require critical attention and political goodwill, prior planning, and sustained investment in key sectors of national economies if Africa is to forestall a humanitarian and environmental crisis in 25 years.
By 2050 for instance, Africa will, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), require an additional 120 million hectares of land to feed her people. Whereas the continent holds the bulk of the world’s uncultivated arable land, fears that agricultural production will encroach into fragile forest and wildlife habitats, reduce the land available for conservation, block migration routes, and cause a spike in human-wildlife conflict are valid.
Since 1960, tropical Africa’s forest cover has declined by 22%, comparable to forest loss in the Amazon. While illegal logging and deforestation to clear land for agriculture are often cited as the main drivers of forest loss, the widespread use of wood fuel as a primary source of energy across Africa is often glossed over.
Uncontrolled clearing of bush, grassland, and forest for farming is ruinous for both people and wildlife, particularly in semi-arid areas prone to climate risk. In the Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya, for instance, cultivated fields to feed Nairobi’s urban and peri-urban communities are rapidly replacing natural vegetation, with the cultivation occurring on mountain slopes, rivers, and swamps. These are critical dry season grazing areas for pastoralists and wildlife. Their alteration significantly affects the landscape’s climate resilience, putting livestock and wildlife in peril.
In the Maasai Mara ecosystem, Dr. Joseph Ogutu, a wildlife population dynamics expert and scholar, has reported a 60% decline in wildebeest numbers. Ogutu warns that the wildebeest migration, a phenomenon of global interest that drives tourism in Kenya and Tanzania, could collapse by 2050—or sooner, due to human population growth, agricultural expansion, and climate change.
Maasai community members with cattle, Amboseli, Kenya. Photo: Michael Zomer / © IFAW
In addition to these issues, which are only a snapshot of the challenge ahead, the projected population increase will be accompanied by a 13% increase in urbanisation across Africa and the heightened risks associated with climate change.
The time to plan for and implement sustainable agricultural, housing, water, sanitation, and transport systems is now. We must explore, with urgency, the mechanisms for making clean energy accessible and affordable to the rural and urban poor, invest in the protection of water resources, and safeguard wildlife dispersal and migratory routes.
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