Original version

BBC World Service Online

More or Less

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Tim Harford explains the numbers and statistics in the news and in life

Tim Harford explains the numbers and statistics in the news and in life.

More Or Less

More or Less: Will 40 per cent of the world's workforce really be in Africa by 2050?

News

Workers in Lagos

23/06/2013

Will 40 per cent of the world's workforce really be in Africa by 2050?

BBC World Service - More or Less, Will 40 per cent of the world's workforce really be in Africa by 2050?

How do we calculate future population projections in Africa?

We examine the future population projections for Africa and find out how they are calculated. And how long was the runway at the end of The Fast and the Furious 6?

In late May the US Secretary of State, John Kerry told an audience in Ethiopia that by 2050, 40% of the world's workforce would be African. The night before at the African Union 50th Anniversary Summit he said something slightly different - that 25% of the world's workforce would be African by 2050 rather and that by 2100, 40% of the world's young people would be African. We examine whether any of the claims are true.

The programme hears from Francois Pelletier, the Chief of the Estimates and Projections Division in the United Nations Population Division and Sarah Walters, an African Demographer from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The final scene of one of this year's most popular films - The Fast and the Furious 6 - has been the subject of intense debate. How long must the runway have been to have allowed a transport jet travelling in excess of 100 miles an hour to land, be chased by cars and then try and take off again? The internet has been awash with speculation and estimates but More or Less will attempt to provide the definitive answer.

Image: Nigerian worker with a laptop. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Accessibility links

Programme Index

More or Less

Will 40 per cent of the world's workforce really be in Africa by 2050?

Genres

Brand

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service