In their 2014 paper "Writing history backwards or sideways", the two authors echo Manning in querying reported African growth rates for the first half of the 20th century: this time they go one better by concluding that even the continental population in 1950 is underestimated today by up to a tenth.
The paper suffers from the same fundamental problem as Manning's: reluctance to credit late colonial-era African populations with the growth rates implied by contemporary population returns as adjusted where necessary by subsequent scholarship, a perspective I find slightly dispiriting in seeming at risk of sidelining the resilience and adaptability of former colonial peoples in times of enormous change.
Frankema & Jerven start by considering three cases of relatively well-documented populations: Ghana in 1948, Nigeria in 1953, and Kenya, for which they work back from the seemingly fairly comprehensive 1969 census to the less complete 1962 count and beyond. They propose respective upward revisions of 12%, 28% and 8% in the official numbers. But at least two of the cases, there are serious questions concerning the appropriateness of the suggested resizing, still more so when applied to the generally-accepted regional population total.
To start with Ghana, the authors are entirely right to question the 1948 census return in light of the results for 1931 and 1960, both considered highly successful undertakings, and their proposed correction of the result is if anything modest. The problem is that nobody today uses the unadjusted 1948 figure in any case: their revision is already incorporated into all present-day estimates for the period: in fact their estimate represents the very minimum that might be gleaned from the UN data by abandoning the 1950 figure as excessive and substituting improbably high annual growth of 2.8% over 1948-52.
Much the same goes for at least part of the 1952/53 Nigerian count: the raw figure of 31 million is likewise little used today as an accurate count of numbers present, implying as it does a mid-century total of only 29 million. The latest UN projection implies 39.24 million at October 1952 (the weighted mid-point of the census period) - above Frankema & Jerven's 39m despite incorporating an improbably sluggish 1.67% annual growth rate.
In fact analysis of Nigeria’s long-run demographic growth indicates a 1952/53 population of some 36-37 million, with 35 million in 1950 – and such a result is (unlike the higher figure) compatible with both high and low reckonings for 1911-31 and 1991-2006, depending on the timing of growth. Indeed even this may be an over-generous estimate: comparison by the Africapolis project of census data with satellite evidence suggests that Nigeria’s latest return may represent a substantial overcount. No such assumption is required to conclude that both the UN and Frankema-Jerven estimates for earlier periods are needlessly high, sustained by a large 1991 adjustment and low growth rates in the 1950s and 1960s – 1.8% in the earlier decade according to the UN tabulation.
A result 2-2½ million below the authors' represents an upward adjustment of around 18% to the official returns, an exceptionally large correction factor in its own right. But more to the point, the needed correction is already more than incorporated in UN and other international data, none of which – as with the 1948 Gold Coast enumeration – use the unadjusted tally in the first place. If anything, the latest UN number for 1950 – the highest released to date - is almost certainly excessive, not omitting millions but rather inserting 2½-3m who there’s no reason to believe were actually there at all.
And so to Kenya. Here Frankema & Jerven’s conclusion is similarly shaky, at least for 1960:
Assuming a population growth rate of 2.5 per cent for Kenya in the 1960s—which is still a rather high rate—and taking the 11.1 million as a reliable estimate of the 1969 level, one has to adjust the 1962 estimate to 9.35 million (an upward adjustment of 8 per cent).
In fact we need do nothing of the sort, because there is no reason to consider a 2½% annual growth rate high or even sufficient for 1960s east Africa: all of the region’s counts of the period indicate a rate nearer 3%, grounds indeed to raise the 1962 population to 8.7 million or so, with 8.2m in 1960, little above the latest UN estimate. The authors do have a valid point however when it comes to 1950, for which the UN's figures seem low for each of Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Rwanda, understating the regional total by more than three-quarters of a million.
And so Frankema & Jerven’s sweeping critique of modern estimates of mid-century African population estimates turns out to be a damp squib. Their proposed net revision for the three countries studied amounts to not the promised ten million but little over a hundred thousand against the UN numbers, all Kenyan – indeed on balance as few as a quarter of the Kenyans omitted in the UN’s 1950 projection. For the biggest country, Nigeria, which as they observe accounts for most of the uncertainty, their reworking implies a lower figure than the world body's, as does their result for Ghana.
The authors could have found stronger support for higher numbers in the data for the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the latest World population prospects understates mid-century population by anything from half a million to 1½m following decades of downward revisions: Niger, Mauritania and Madagascar seem similarly undercounted, to the tune of perhaps half a million between them. But against such examples should be set those of Mali, Mozambique, Benin and Malawi where numbers are unlikely to have reached those reported, contributing probably well over a million to the contrary side of the account alongside 2-3m excess Nigerians. The net result is not an increment of twenty million but rather a reduction of two million against the present data.
That leaves us still with the original 228 million or so for 1950 - nearly a million more by the UN’s reckoning, a million fewer here. The corrections which would raise the total by twenty million have already been made, in the sensible adjustments that decades ago raised numbers from the clearly deficient 200m implied by raw census numbers and contemporary administrative estimates. Frankema and Jerven have erred spectacularly in directing valid criticisms of uncorrected returns against data incorporating (sometimes in excess) the very revisions they urge.
The authors are correct though in their critique of Manning’s flatline interpretation of pre-1920 African population. Here they echo comments made here about the inappropriateness of using Indian growth trends in an African context and then double-counting adverse factors already incorporated to begin with in the selection of a slow "default" rate. Their suggestion of looking instead to higher southeast Asian rates is attractive:
India’s demographic development constituted an aberration from the Asian pattern. Why would African demographic regimes, operating in a context of open land frontiers, better reflect that of densely populated India rather than land-abundant Indonesia?
Frankema & Jerven conclude by proposing an alternative set of default growth rates averaging the Indian trend with a minimum (1% over 1851-1920, 2% in 1920-50 and 2½% in 1950-60) for Indonesia and the Philippines. The results are a great improvement on Manning's, but again err on the side of low growth by incorporating India’s dire 1876-1920 experience along with inexplicably low rates even for that troubled subcontinent in the 1850s-60s, 1880s, 1900s and 1930s.
The authors have identified much of the problem with Manning's data, and their observation as to the usefulness of southeast Asian trends is a valuable insight. Unfortunately much of their time was spent pursuing a 1950s data revision that was accomplished decades ago and already underpins most of today’s estimates. Tellingly, the table illustrating the impact of their inflation of 1950 population doesn't extend as far as 1960 (unlike the unadjusted series), because then it would have to show an improbable total of 300-310m (against a generally accepted 282-285m) or incorporate implausibly low 1950s growth.
19th-century African population is likely to remain a bone of contention owing to the unknown timing of the rise in annual growth from pre-colonial levels. Independent estimates by Caldwell, Durand and McEvedy (as well as my own projections) have tended to centre around a continental total of 50 million 500 years ago, before the Atlantic slave trade made a significant impact, suggesting in turn roughly 30-35m at CE 1000 and annual growth of 0.1-0.2% over the millennium to 1800, rising to 0.3% by the end of the period.
Assuming some 228 million in 1950, all-Africa population in 1920 is likely to have numbered around 145m, in 1900 125m, beyond which projections are subject to assumptions about the onset of acceleration: 95-105m in 1850 (dismissing Frankema-Jerven's improbably low 0.3% in 1890-1920 along with their deficient 1930-50 rates), depending on whether underlying sub-Saharan growth rose gradually to 0.7% a year by the 1900s and 1.1% in the early 1920s, or stayed below half a per cent until a "big bang" c.1920 following the traumas of conquest, atrocity, war and epidemic; and 80-95m c.1800 reckoning the Maghreb and Egypt at 10-11 million and southern Africa at 2½m.
In concrete terms, given constant or moderately rising Tropical African fertility (the latter assuming a constant crude birth rate of 48 per thousand, the former implying a slow decline from around 52 as gradually improving longevity lowered the proportion of women of childbearing age), the issue concerns the timing of the fall in the crude death rate from 44-48 in the mid-19th century to 29 in 1950, representing an increase in expectation of life at birth from 21-23 years to nearly 35.
Even an "optimistic" scenario incorporating substantial late nineteenth-century gains from New World crop diffusion places the overwhelming majority of the underlying mortality improvement after 1900, here from 24-25 years of life in relatively peaceful areas at the turn of the century to 26-27 in the early 1920s and 30 in the 1930s. Against this must be set losses through armed conflict, disease and exploitation, culminating in nearly four million influenza deaths in 1918-20: Caldwell indeed suggests that population in 1920 was eleven million lower than it would have been had the trend of 1840-80 persisted.
Consensus on the long-term movement is likely to remain elusive, depending on calculations of the aggregate toll of slave removals (including those killed in the process of capture or movement to slaving entrepots), the impact of New World crops, deaths in colonial conquest and through European excesses, and the recuperative power of local populations. But even a cursory reconstruction of the overall pattern suggests lower numbers than those offered in recent revisions.
It is all the more surprising that Morten Jerven should come to such a pessimistic finding about the past after his recent criticisms of at best low-growth estimates of post-1990s African economic performance. It seems likelier that the capacities that enabled Africans to survive and sometimes thrive in the aftermath of 1980s structural adjustment were present in earlier generations and centuries amid the traumas of slave-raiding, conquest and associated disruption.
In submitting their piece, Frankema and Jerven hope to ignite – or rekindle – an exchange about African population history. It is a long-overdue discussion, and their contribution offers a useful reminder of the fragility of all our estimates. But their own overcount offers little better a guide than Manning’s hypothesis of near-stagnation.
