‘Plan your family or we will halt free primary education project’

• Scary figures: Kenya’s population is growing at the rate of one million annually and will hit the 40 million mark two months from now. There are many ways to explain this, but the most significant fact is that one in every four married women has an unmet need for family planning, a figure that has not reduced in more than a decade. The population is growing faster than the economy, and now the government says people will have to plan their families or face a dreary prospect. But who’s listening?

Gorety Awinja, 20, cuddles her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter. The wailing child is hungry, but her mother is seven months pregnant and, therefore, unable to find work; so there is no food. Neither Gorety nor her husband has a steady job, neither of them went to secondary school... and none of them believes in family planning.

By the time their first born celebrates her second birthday, her younger sibling will be four months old, and Gorety could be pregnant again. The family will have grown, but its finances are most unlikely to have improved. With little education, the job opportunities available to both father and mother are limited and low-paying.

Gorety and her husband are proving sociologists right: the poorer a family is in these parts of the world, the likelier it is to be huge. Fifty-five per cent of women in Kenya do not use contraceptives, and the poor of the poor are the most affected.

According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), lack of family planning, coupled with low education levels, have led to a population boom that is set to hit the 40 million mark two months from now.

That is bad news for a country grappling with a staggering economy and overwhelming levels of poverty.

This year, for instance, the economy is projected to grow at 5.6 per cent. Contrast that with the expected three per cent growth in population numbers and you will see why the increasing number of mouths to feed is worrying planners.

“For the poverty levels, which stand at 46 per cent, to decrease and for Kenya to stabilise, there is need for the economy to grow at thrice the population growth rate. If the population increase is rapid then something needs to be done to slow it down,” says Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) director general in charge of population, Anthony Kilele.

During celebrations to mark World Population Day on July 11, Planning minister Wycliffe Oparanya said this matter presented a challenge, an opportunity and a call to action for the country and the world.

The 2009 national population census reported that Kenya has about 38 million citizens, and that number is growing at a rate of three per cent annually. That means Kenya gets rough one million new souls every year, growing the population to over 80 million in 2050.

“(The Kenya) Vision 2030 aims to achieve a balance between population and socio-economic growth to improve people’s wellbeing,” Oparanya said.

“Whether we can live together on a healthy planet will depend on the choices that we make now.”

Experts are working on strategies to decrease the number of births per woman as a short-term measure.

UNFPA statistics indicate that, currently, a Kenyan woman gives birth to at least four or five children, leading to a national total of 7,150 new babies daily.

These statistics, combined with those on population growth rate, point to a country with a high fertility rate, poor use of family planning methods and increased life expectancy due to the advances made in reducing the spread of HIV/Aids.

Oparanya says there is a need to press for reproductive health rights that include the right to freely and responsibly determine the number, spacing and timing of children without coercion, discrimination and violence.

“Unfortunately, while the right to sexual and reproductive health has been proclaimed, it is far from being universally respected. There are still an estimated 215 million women in less developed countries who want to avoid or delay pregnancy, but lack access to modern contraception. One in four married women in Kenya has an unmet need for family planning, a figure that has not reduced in more than a decade,” the minister says.

Another terrible statistic born of the impact of the lack of reproductive health is that about 7,900 women die in Kenya every year while giving birth.

These deaths, according to the Planning ministry, can be prevented if couples are provided with adequate reproductive health information and services, including family planning, and ensuring that every child is wanted and every birth is safe.