Tanzania’s population projected to reach 54.2m this year

Dar es Salaam. The age-dependency ratio in Tanzania is projected to be 92 per cent in 2018, while the population is expected to grow to 54.2 million.

Breaking that down, the projection shows that there will be 52.6 million people on Tanzania-Mainland, and 1.6 million on the Isles across the Zanzibar Channel, bringing the national total to 54.2 million souls.

The Minister for Finance and Planning, Dr Philip Mpango, said yesterday that 92 out of every 100 Tanzanians aged between 15 and 65 years depended on the eight persons in the group of 100 for their life’s needs.

Launching the population projection in Dar es Salaam, he said the national population growth rate was in the range of 1.6 million people per year. “We took into consideration the ratio of deaths and newborns to determine the average population growth rate,” Dr Mpango said, adding that there were two million newborns, and 400,000 deaths in the country every year.

The population projections make Tanzania the fifth most populous country in Africa this year after Nigeria (195.87 million), Ethiopia (107.53 million), Egypt (99.37 million) and DR Congo (84.00 million).

The projections announced yesterday differ from those announced last year by the World Bank, which said Tanzania’s population was expected to grow to 58 million this year.

Contesting the World Bank projections, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) director general Albina Chuwa said it was impossible for the country’s population to grow at such a fast rate.

“That does not reflect the reality, when we consider deaths and newborns, as well as the average number of newborns per mother,” Dr Chuwa said.

According to the new projections, every mother in Tanzania today bears a total of five children on average.

In any case, Tanzania’s population is projected to reach 59.4 million in 2021 and 77.5 million people in 2030 when at least 50 per cent of the population will be under 18 years of age.