WE ARE SITTING ON A TIMEBOMB
Zambia’s population today: 20,986,170. Just under 21 million that’s the Zambia Statistics Agency’s own number.
By 2041, sixteen years from now, we will be 32 to 35 million.
That’s 11.7 million more people. A 51% increase. And this is the part that should stop you cold: it is not a forecast. It is already locked in.
46% of Zambians alive today are under fifteen. Those children are already born. They will become parents in the 2030s whether any government plans for it or not. Even a fertility collapse with no precedent anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa would not stop us reaching 30 million.
The only question left is not whether this happens. It’s what state we’re in when it does.
And today, before one more person is added, we already have serious deficits in housing, education, health, water, power, jobs. Over the next sixteen years, we have to close those gaps AND absorb twelve million more people into homes, schools, clinics, taps and jobs that don’t exist yet.
This is the time bomb.
We walk through what it means, sector by sector. Not sixteen years from now. Today, with the population we already have.
Tomorrow, why this is not just a Lusaka problem.
Fred M’membe
SP President