Africa's Growth Story Brightens 

Not far from the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Ethiopia's capital city of Addis Ababa, a young woman named Bosena, 25, sits on the side of a busy road with a baby in her arms.

She has two children, and all of her income - about 30 birr a day, or 1.58 dollars - comes from begging. She migrated to the city from the countryside, and wants to secure a good education for her children. "But if I don't get enough money, then I can't send them to school," she told IPS.
Just around the corner, the very issues that affect Bosena - urbanisation, child rearing, poverty and education - were being discussed at UNECA, where a conference called "Regional Conference on Population and Development Beyond 2014″ took place from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4.
The conference - which is the last in a series of regional conferences held around the world - is meant to assess developmental progress since 1994, when the first International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo set out a programme of action to adjust to demographic changes around the world.
In the two decades since 1994, quite a lot has changed. Africa's population is seeing incredible growth - about 21 million people every single year since 1994 - and is about to hit 1.2 billion. A U.N. report last month projected that it could more than triple by the end of this century.
That could put a monumental strain on governments across the continent, which are already struggling to address rampant poverty and underdevelopment. But the news isn't all bad; Africa boasts some of the world's fastest-growing economies.
The International Monetary Fund predicted this year that economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa should hit 6.1 percent by 2014, far exceeding the expected global average of four percent. Urban centres are transforming into hubs of enterprise, so it's no surprise that Africa's population boom is increasingly centred around cities. The continent has the world's fastest rate of urbanisation; in 1950, only 14.4 percent of people lived in cities; by 2011, the figure was 39.6 percent.
If economic development can keep up, Africa's population growth could become a boon rather than a challenge. More than 70 percent of the continent's population is under the age of 30, and these young people could spur incredible productivity in the years to come.