Large population is panacea for socio-economic progress

The release of the results sparked public debates especially on social media with a large number of commentators decrying the slow population growth in Botswana as compared to other African countries. The majority of people attributed the general decline in population growth to “fertility” and “mortality” rates that the country registered in the past 10 years since the last census in 2011.

In fact, Botswana is one of the lowest in terms of population size in both the region and Africa at large. In my observation on some conversations by locals as they reflected on the census results, some proponents of large populations cited various reasons why they think Botswana can make some serious strides in socio-economic development provided it has a large population.