What if the elephants decide to make love …

If current projections hold, Tanzania will be home to over 130m citizens -- the size of the Nigerian population today – within the next 37 short years, The Guardian on Sunday can report.

At present growth rates of 2.8 per cent a year, arable land per capita could meanwhile undergo perilous stresses – shrinking from 1.8ha in 1990 down to 0’97ha today; before every farmer has to squeeze all his/her crops within 0.2ha, or less than half a football pitch, when we tip the Nigerian population scales in 2050, says Dr Nicholas Nyange, Chief Research Officer at the Commission for Science and Technology (Costech).

The current population of 45m people could increase by more 50% within the next fourteen years (2026)  – but then more than double in another two decades hence to reach today’s Nigerian mark: over 130m people, Dr Nyange told the just-ended annual meeting of the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) at the Kunduchi Beach Hotel.Continue reading