The Economist features an article on Jan. 4 on overpopulation in Africa’s Great Lakes region, providing the context for the imperial rag to once again raise the corpse of Thomas Malthus. The problem that they have is that their once self-fulfilling predictions are now on the verge of being disproven in real time, as the technology of the standard gauge rail (SGR) network advances on the continent.
Focusing on the tiny nation of Burundi, the self-proclaimed ’”economists” say that the country is on the verge of running out of space ... for people. “In Burundi,” they intone in the opening, “14 million people squeeze into an area not much bigger than Wales or Massachusetts [and] the only countries to beat Burundi [in population density] are Bangladesh, Taiwan and, by a little, its northerly neighbor, Rwanda.” In fact, judging from the included map, the entire region around Lake Victoria— including southern Uganda and western Kenya— is in trouble, as indicated by the deep (blood) red color.
The difference here, they emphasize, is that this is not urban overpopulation—the spread of city-building—but the exact opposite: This is rural overpopulation, or properly read, the lack of high population-density urban centers. Here, the genocidalists seemingly can’t refrain from mentioning their mentor, the “gloomy English cleric” Thomas Malthus, quoting his 1798 prediction that “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the Earth to produce subsistence.”
Beyond mentioning that Malthus’ “gloomy” forecasts have been repeatedly disproven by the ensuing two-plus centuries of continued population growth, the reality is doubly clear here. The immediate proof is in the SGR transport, which is steadily proceeding to surround the entire Great Lakes area on which The Economist pronounces its death sentence.
Literally as the Malthusians were speaking, Kenya was anticipating the groundbreaking for the 475 km Phase 2B and 2C segments of the Kenyan transnational line to the Ugandan border; the 273 km line connecting the Kenyan border to the Ugandan capital of Kampala is already being built; and the 1,400 km transnational line from Tanzania is steadily progressing toward Uganda from the south, with two of five of its segments already in service. (The Kenyan line is being built by China and the Ugandan and Tanzanian segments by the Turkish firm Yapi Merkez.)
In 2024, an agreement was signed to extend the Tanzanian line—which already includes a spur into the Democratic Republic of the Congo—into the town of Musongati in central Burundi, construction of which began in August. Each segment will include multiple terminals, each and all of which are expected to expand into population-dense urban areas.
Was this the threat that actually motivated The Economist's article?
