Malawi to adopt China’s one child policy

At a time when Malawi’s population keeps rising- now at 17.7 Million, the government is pondering on enforcing the adoption China’s famous one child policy if the current population trend continues, sources have indicated.

Sources say the government has incessantly been warned by the international community and several other humanitarian organizations working in Malawi about the dangers of the continued boom in the country’s population.

This has made government contemplate the idea of adopting China’s flagship one child policy, which stands out among core means of reducing population boom in the world.

Government has however not come out in the open on this matter.

In Malawi,  there currently is no policy on child birth with most couples averaging around four children in recent years which is a slight decrease from the early 90s.

In January this year, the United States of America (USA) population expert had said that Malawi’s current population will hit a 40 Million record of people by 2040 if the current trend of child-birth is not urgently checked.

On Monday, Malawi joined other nations in commemorating the World Population Day.

Minister of Finance and Economic Planning Goodall Gondwe argued for the need of re-enforcement of tight family planning methods that would stop the trend.

“We have more people to feed and income per capita is expected to be reduced,” Gondwe said.

According to Country metres website, as of 1 January 2016, the population of Malawi was estimated to be 17.7 million people.

This is an increase of 2.76 % compared to population of 17.2 million the year before. In 2015 the natural increase was positive, as the number of births exceeded the number of deaths by 476,942.

The sex ratio of the total population was 1.002 (1002 males per 1 000 females) which is lower than global sex ratio.

The global sex ratio in the world was approximately 1016 males to 1000 females as of 2015.

Below are the key figures for Malawi population in 2015:

• 705,142 live births
• 228,200 deaths
• Natural increase (Difference between deaths and live births): 476,942 people
• Net migration: 0 people
• 8,880,146 males as of 31 December 2015
• 8,858,532 females as of 31 December 2015

The one-child policy, a part of the family planning policy, was a population planning policy of China. It was introduced between 1978 and 1980 and began to be formally phased out in 2015. The policy allowed many exceptions and ethnic minorities were exempt. In 2007, 36% of China’s population was subject to a strict one-child restriction, with an additional 53% being allowed to have a second child if the first child was a girl.

According to the Chinese government, 400 million births were prevented.