these were the years of optimism. unprecedented demographic growth swelled Africa's population from something more than 200 million in 1950 to nearly 500 million in 1980, driven by medical progress and increased fertility. A youthful, liberating momentum destroyed European rule, fostered individual opportunity and mobility, and inspired attempts to create nation-states. A generation of global economic growth brought new prosperity to many parts of the continent. Only during the 1970s did the costs of expansion become clear as numbers outran employment and resources, nationalist heroes hardened into aging autocrats, and global recession exposed the frailties underlying growth rates.

RAPID POPULATION GROWTH

Around 1950 population growth accelerated swiftly. In the Belgian Congo, for example, the annual growth rate increased between the earlier 1940s and the late 1950s from about 1 to nearly 2.5 percent. By the 1970s, the average for sub-Saharan Africa was 2.8 percent. In Kenya in 1979, it was 4.1 percent, the highest figure recorded. The chief reason for acceleration was a further fall in deathrates. Between 1950 and 1988, life expectancy at birth in sub-Saharan Africa rose from 39 to 51 years. Its deathrate fell between 1965 and 1988 from 22 to 16 per thousand. The decline was due chiefly to lower infant and child mortality. In the 1950s, there were many African countries where 30 to 40 percent of children died before age 5, but few where less than 22 percent died by that age.