A Road Map to Accelerate the Fertility Decline in Western Africa

From a demographic standpoint, most Western African countries are chiefly characterized by their slow demographic transitions. Fertility levels remain high, estimated at 5.4 children per woman on average. Contraceptive prevalence rates (CPRs) are very low, at less than 10% overall (modern methods) and have stagnated in several countries over the past 10 years. Given this context, the paramount population policy question is whether these countries can accelerate their demographic and, particularly, fertility transitions with the view of capturing their demographic dividend.
The paper, focused on 13 countries, will offer an overview of fertility and contraception trends, based on the Bongaarts model of the proximate determinants. Thereafter, the paper will review the set of policies and strategies that could help accelerate the fertility transition. The paper will also combine the results of the fertility analysis with the examination of the policies and strategies as well as other programmatic interventions specifically geared at reducing fertility. Finally, the paper will offer a “road map” or a set of steps that would permit to increase CPRs by about 1.5 percentage point per year, as compared to 0.5 currently.