Population Growth and Development in The Gambia

[Music] from the remotest village to the biggest city everywhere you look in the Gambia you see children so why are there so many young people here and how does it affect the geography of the country what impact does a young and growing population have on resources how does the government make sure there are sufficient services how to large families meet basic needs like food and clothes how can the growth rate be slowed down this programs about the way Gambia's people its government and other organizations are meeting the challenges making sure that today's young gamfield have a sustainable future so their marketing mobile melody along people aiming primary plan individual wallah you move on your analogy you want a family planning - what they would've already Lincoln upon no more it's Friday lunchtime and Jame sanay and some of his children are on their way to prayers at the local mosque in CEREC under near the capital ban jewel with 13 living children from two wives Jame may not be a typical Gambian but he's not that unusual either 95% of the Gambia's population and Muslim women and girls are not allowed into the mosque they also have little say about how many children until recently most religious teachers discouraged contraception and family planning but religious beliefs are the only reason that large families are commonplace in the gambia discussing matters relating to sex and sexuality is culturally a taboo and in in this country particularly with young people young people like your kids it's not generally done in in our culture and our families in our tradition just over 10,000 square kilometers the Gambia is Africa's smallest country it's dominated by the river gambia which flows of 487 kilometers whilst Jame and his family live near the capital Van George many Gambians live in rural areas they keep goats and cattle and grow rice maize and ground nuts to feed themselves or sell for cash for these families there's another reason to have lots of children you will add the goodies that the more hands you have you know the better for you in terms of a special production because they can assist you and your son you know in your crop production okay that has been the idea a long time and as a result people are raising you know large family for many Gambians including Jam a religious cultural and economic beliefs combined to create a preference for large families the birth rate or the number of children born per thousand population each year is 40 more than three times as many as most more economically developed countries or meed sees the result is that the Gambia has one of the youngest populations of any country in the world the high birth rate means Gambia's population pyramid as a wide base this narrows quickly because a lot of people die before they reach 40 with few medical facilities 11 mothers die for every thousand children born the infant mortality rate is 73 mm live births the 35th highest in the world average life expectancy is just 53 for men and 57 for women and Gambia's youthful population is also a growing one by 2050 its pyramid is expected to look like this that's because at current growth rates its population is expected to double every 28 years with so many young people to provide for parents like Jam a struggle to meet all their needs creating what's called a high depending on our ratio the country's dependency ratio tells us about the number of people who are of working age and those who are dependent on them to work it out add the percentage of the population under 15 and over 64 and divide that by the percentage of people or of working age in The Gambia 45 percent are under 15 3 percent are over 65 and 52 percent of working-age so the dependency ratio just over 92 percent in other words for every hundred people who are working age there are just under 93 who needs of the object more people means more pressure on resources and this creates numerous challenges for a cash-strapped government once you have this really the issue of population is way the situation becomes complex for the government particularly in terms of providing the needs of that population be it in terms of health it becomes a challenge be it in terms of Education comes another issue you know bit in terms of providing there there other basic needs the World Health Organization says population growth and poverty are always linked this is the main street in CEREC under Gambia's largest settlement like many roads in the Gambia this one's unpaved as the population grows times are expanding rapidly and the government doesn't have the money to build the infrastructure that's needed the town where Jami lives is also growing and like many gambling he struggles to provide his large family with even basic housing you can see this room okay he's my second wife she has eight kids okay that's our room here okay that's our bedroom with the kids okay some during the nighttime so annoying people sleep in that bed yeah no not in bits in beta but what I can say presently Sabula on display here really saving on visible death and another sponge we have to put it down there during that time they lay on it okay so does the please haha this is the place where the where Jamie lives there's no sanitation running water the family toilets just a fold in the ground when it's full Jamie and his neighbors will dig a new one Burnham where else there is electricity here but few can afford it Jamie's recently been cut on a model because he couldn't pay his bill that's not his only financial problem although he worked full-time the 30 pounds a month he earns as a nurse at Gambia's main hospital doesn't provide enough to feed the 22 people who depend on him the pan of rice being cooked by Meraki and her mother is the only food the whole family gets on those days but compared to some Jamie's family are doing well with the growing population adding to high unemployment and underemployment many Gambians off go hungry and the young and growing population isn't just affecting family resources it's creating bigger challenges - with no money to bathe these schools this one has three thousand students and only twenty six classrooms like many others in The Gambia it's had to adopt a to shift system past the children come to school in the morning and the other half in the afternoon with a shortage of teachers some have to work more than 12 hours a day and all this a very limited learning here so these are formal usted books this is further studies we have to have only 11 of them we need about 45 textbook and we have only 11 SES language English also will add textbook mathematics and all the Soviets are sort of for design this English this the one I use without English textbooks this one I use science we are given under a very very old something us are are broken they're old yeah very old but lack of books isn't the only problem this block of sex toilet has to serve the entire school the ratio is one is the 250 which is offered so during the break period you can find a long queue of 20 30 50 children all ready to use it hello facility at the same time so I think there is real need to work hard as quickly as possible because it is becoming a health hazard more people also use for resources 20 years ago this land was covered with forest today it's only fit for passing herds of nomadic goats and this is one of the reasons it's become so degraded everyday vast numbers of trees are chopped down and taken out of the forest destined to become firewood for Gambia's growing urban population the situation is so serious that the present rate of destruction nearly all Gambia's forests disappear within 50 years [Music] today Gambians are amongst the poorest people in the world but despite meager resources with the help of government policies and foreign aid they are meeting the challenges created by their youthful population and the most important challenge of all is slowing the growth rate down I'll talk with my wife about that we could have stopped it now really is very very happy about it she is very very happy money you may not want to talk about it but for the first time in his life Jame sunny who goes white started using contraception for the government it's another success story brought about in part by a monk or awareness campaign okay according upon men to one of music oh yeah mullah wati wati below physical note on this answer made by the Gambian family planning authority is one of many TV adverts that are broadcast every day in an effort to raise awareness of contraception but not everyone in The Gambia has access to a television so the awareness campaign uses different methods to get through to people in sir singer Tay and his family lived 200 miles upriver in a remote part of the country near gorge times they get their information via the radio and right now they're listening to a weekly program called encounter the phone in topic is flowy planning but in rural areas like these the average family lives on just a few dollars a week and it's no good raising awareness of different types of contraception if people simply can't afford them and that's why working together with a non-governmental organization or NGO called futures the Gambian authorities are promoting a new development concept called social marketing so marketing content of putting out products into the t'market sector so that you eat this access so that you you bring the products for the people every week the futures team delivers thousands of contraceptives to pharmacies across the Gambia the price is subsidized by the World Health Organization and that means that even the very poorest people can afford them in the first eight months the projects of nearly half a million condoms and packets of pills quite an achievement in the country with a population are just one and a half million there's more people certainly wouldn't you have multiple open to [ __ ] even men also in the case of condoms men always women actually maybe because of the campaign which is going on here the awareness of the importance of family planning and so forth formally people we are not aware of the importance of them so I think actually the company has going to beat a lot hello good evening businesses welcome to our weekly function will be welcome to finally coming to life on the first video of a man - two years in Italian researcher particle tonight we will be responding about family sentiment assistant position in the awareness campaign and subsidized contraception are already having an effect the population growth rate has fallen from 4.2 percent in 1993 to about 3 percent in 2005 but reducing the birth rate isn't just about providing affordable contraception okay my first wife she has she has seven kids okay Phyllis two is already with five Marty moment okay the second wife also to here nine kilos one the rest are here if you think jammy seems a move by the death of three of his children that may be because in The Gambia it's a very common occurrence one in ten children die before their fifth birthday families often have more children as they know some will die young on it to combat this trend the government has launched a major child health program were both this clinic a mile or so from Jamie's house in Sarah Kunda has been extended and refurbished with the help of funding from the Canadian government it now provides basic health care for 50,000 people many of them children but reducing infant mortality is about preventing disease as well as treating it every child has access to free vaccinations and we do have a schedule of all the vaccinations we do vaccinate against you know six to seven preventable childhood illnesses including you know tuberculosis whooping cough and measles yellow fever hepatitis B and so on the countrywide vaccination program has already begun to bring the infant mortality rate down but reducing the birth rate isn't just about improving the health of Gambia's children naima tray era is the duty nurse at a private maternity clinic here they offer a range of services aimed at improving the health of expectant mothers we help them to to to take care of themselves we educate them on on their physical well-being and sometimes we'll help them and cancel them on how to nurture themselves and their families we are going to deliver what now yes in the 1990s Gambia had a total fertility rate or TFR of seven in other words during her reproductive life the average Gambian woman would have had seven children as well as providing medical care to make birth safer centers like this one encourage women to space their births to allow their bodies time to recover we always to get them to show them the importance of the spacing because if you don't stay still you always every two years one year you have a child you know the other one will not have a good head and you will be able to take care of that your your child the one you have so we always educate them also and that is so that their children can have health and they also can be healthy healthy mothers and taking calculated the center also offers counseling to women and in a country where until recently talking about women's health was largely taboo attitudes are changing remarkably quickly men they are down there standing now accepting what many many means they bring down they are unwise they even tell the wife sometimes they even gives tell the world that you should go to family planning yes they send them for our service they send their wives and they give them money for a fare to pay for books and sometimes they evening escort them it's still early days but better direct care for women encouraging spacing and improving infant health care already appear to be having an effect if you look at the total fertility rate it took a downward trend to fix in year 2000 and we are about to conduct the next national demographic and health service and I wouldn't be surprised you know to see that things are beginning to stabilize but of course it will take some time and the implications of course if we do not have it stabilized I mean it will be war for our economies because the little money that the state should spend on development projects will have to be spent on other social you know projects for this kind of situation whether urban or rural nearly all Gambians use firewood for cooking they also use wood for housing fencing and furniture as the population grows so too does demand for this limited resource but this is just one of the reasons that Gambia is being deforested at an alarming rate at the turn of the century most of the country was covered in thick forests since then more than two-thirds or about 7,000 square kilometers of forest have disappeared but with financial and technical help from the German government the Gambian authorities have begun to act launching a forest management plan that it's hoped will stop depletion and even begin restoring some of the degraded areas [Music] music and dong are just two underway the forest educators get villagers to think about the causes of deforestation the ideas they talk about include over grazing clearing land for cultivation and bush fires if they're successful the villagers attending this meeting will eventually be given full ownership of their own community forest by helping the people who live in the bush to manage the forest themselves the Gambian government hopes to slow or even halts the rate of deforestation the forest educators also teach people to make better use of the many resources the forest has to offer they've even begun trying to reverse some of the damage that's already been done this is one of a number of government owned and run forests parks these protected areas are being regenerated and it's illegal to graze cattle or take firewood this is schedule Senegal iNSYS I mean come on Leo coil jello in The Gambia I mean normally before the planting season we come out in the money coming in the forest parks to scout for the graded site so that we can do ended land planting so as to posted it in a reason and then Nedley please more dense it viable tree species so that is why the seedlings here it was planted during the last planting season from um in a middle of July up to a leaders of others by returning forests to community ownership and running planting schemes in forests parks the authorities have slowed the rate of destruction but as Gambia's population continues to grow the future of the forest depends on the next generation and many believe the key to success lies in providing them with a good education as one of the poorest 50 countries in the world Gambia has a GDP or gross domestic product of about a thousand pounds per person in order to get by many families rely on income from their children and one in three between the ages of 10 and 14 are working in the 1990s only 61% of girls attended primary school and three out of four women were unable to read or write but thanks to a government campaign all that's beginning to change people have become more and more aware of the fact that if you educate a man you are educating one person but if you educate a woman you educate amazing so that is why education is taking a new tone now education is the key of the world education is the key of the war yeah if you educate it you will mind to have any work if anybody if the work from you that's the most important one look at myself - I'm not so educated because if you have English very poor because of I can afford my my father can't pay my school with our friend - so you can see I have same problem now so I wouldn't like my kids to have this kind of problem - Jaime's daughter's Meraki Helen and mama mama still do the chores like fetching drinking water cleaning washing cooking and looking up a younger brothers and sisters but unlike their mothers they also go to school and that means they're much more likely to have fewer healthier children people are becoming more and more aware of the funding the more children you have the more it is difficult to give them the right type of education so we have to bring in the family planning concept to reduce have smaller families to give them good education to give them the right type of education that is needed for them to be able to take care of themselves when they grow this is the Kuta lower basic schools where some of jammas children go in the last 10 years attendance here is almost doubled despite meager resources with careful management and helped from foreign NGOs the school is able to offer a basic education to more than 3,000 children what we are working now is quality how do we maintain quality education how do we give quality education to our children because without quality education we are going nowhere and to provide quality education it needs the resources it needs manpower and all that is money is expensive and third world countries don't have enough money to meet those challenges with funding from the World Food Program all the children who come to school also get a daily meal of rice and beans and for some this will be the only proper meal of the day despite the lack of resources and other challenges created by Gambia's young and growing population there's little doubt that these children are much better educated than their parents something which everyone agrees is vital as they're the ones will be the decision makers of tomorrow shaping Gambia's future and place in the world [Music] when our magic it's Friday again and prayers are over JAMA is at the funeral of a village elder in keeping with local Muslim tradition women don't attend any part of a ceremony but religious attitudes are beginning to change especially when it comes to family planning most religious leaders used to be against all forms of contraception the Prophet peace be upon him said is afraid of population growth that is getting too much of children without means to support them but now God the Almighty has helped us to have very simple way of spacing that is the depressant contraceptive that we can use without having any problems so Islam will always support that most men largely remain the decision-makers family planning is no longer a taboo subject sometimes they even they discuss openly with their husbands and the husband's are Brenda Lee we feel different before that it was not happen but now they found themselves and ask for the sale today information about family planning is everywhere even in youth clubs something that used to be unthinkable the results are already beginning to show population growth has slowed to just under 3% but Gambia's children remain amongst the poorest in the world and they're not alone across Africa population growth and poverty go hand in hand and local initiatives international aid and Deborah's begins to make a difference and if this trend continues and perhaps the next generation of children will have a future that's about more than just struggling to get by no marketing event regarding what everybody [Music]

[Music] from the remotest village to the biggest city everywhere you look in the Gambia you see children so why are there so many young people here and how does it affect the geography of the country what impact does a young and growing population have on resources how does the government make sure there are sufficient services how to large families meet basic needs like food and clothes how can the growth rate be slowed down this programs about the way Gambia's people its government and other organizations are meeting the challenges making sure that today's young gamfield have a sustainable future so their marketing mobile melody along people aiming primary plan individual wallah you move on your analogy you want a family planning - what they would've already Lincoln upon no more it's Friday lunchtime and Jame sanay and some of his children are on their way to prayers at the local mosque in CEREC under near the capital ban jewel with 13 living children from two wives Jame may not be a typical Gambian but he's not that unusual either 95% of the Gambia's population and Muslim women and girls are not allowed into the mosque they also have little say about how many children until recently most religious teachers discouraged contraception and family planning but religious beliefs are the only reason that large families are commonplace in the gambia discussing matters relating to sex and sexuality is culturally a taboo and in in this country particularly with young people young people like your kids it's not generally done in in our culture and our families in our tradition just over 10,000 square kilometers the Gambia is Africa's smallest country it's dominated by the river gambia which flows of 487 kilometers whilst Jame and his family live near the capital Van George many Gambians live in rural areas they keep goats and cattle and grow rice maize and ground nuts to feed themselves or sell for cash for these families there's another reason to have lots of children you will add the goodies that the more hands you have you know the better for you in terms of a special production because they can assist you and your son you know in your crop production okay that has been the idea a long time and as a result people are raising you know large family for many Gambians including Jam a religious cultural and economic beliefs combined to create a preference for large families the birth rate or the number of children born per thousand population each year is 40 more than three times as many as most more economically developed countries or meed sees the result is that the Gambia has one of the youngest populations of any country in the world the high birth rate means Gambia's population pyramid as a wide base this narrows quickly because a lot of people die before they reach 40 with few medical facilities 11 mothers die for every thousand children born the infant mortality rate is 73 mm live births the 35th highest in the world average life expectancy is just 53 for men and 57 for women and Gambia's youthful population is also a growing one by 2050 its pyramid is expected to look like this that's because at current growth rates its population is expected to double every 28 years with so many young people to provide for parents like Jam a struggle to meet all their needs creating what's called a high depending on our ratio the country's dependency ratio tells us about the number of people who are of working age and those who are dependent on them to work it out add the percentage of the population under 15 and over 64 and divide that by the percentage of people or of working age in The Gambia 45 percent are under 15 3 percent are over 65 and 52 percent of working-age so the dependency ratio just over 92 percent in other words for every hundred people who are working age there are just under 93 who needs of the object more people means more pressure on resources and this creates numerous challenges for a cash-strapped government once you have this really the issue of population is way the situation becomes complex for the government particularly in terms of providing the needs of that population be it in terms of health it becomes a challenge be it in terms of Education comes another issue you know bit in terms of providing there there other basic needs the World Health Organization says population growth and poverty are always linked this is the main street in CEREC under Gambia's largest settlement like many roads in the Gambia this one's unpaved as the population grows times are expanding rapidly and the government doesn't have the money to build the infrastructure that's needed the town where Jami lives is also growing and like many gambling he struggles to provide his large family with even basic housing you can see this room okay he's my second wife she has eight kids okay that's our room here okay that's our bedroom with the kids okay some during the nighttime so annoying people sleep in that bed yeah no not in bits in beta but what I can say presently Sabula on display here really saving on visible death and another sponge we have to put it down there during that time they lay on it okay so does the please haha this is the place where the where Jamie lives there's no sanitation running water the family toilets just a fold in the ground when it's full Jamie and his neighbors will dig a new one Burnham where else there is electricity here but few can afford it Jamie's recently been cut on a model because he couldn't pay his bill that's not his only financial problem although he worked full-time the 30 pounds a month he earns as a nurse at Gambia's main hospital doesn't provide enough to feed the 22 people who depend on him the pan of rice being cooked by Meraki and her mother is the only food the whole family gets on those days but compared to some Jamie's family are doing well with the growing population adding to high unemployment and underemployment many Gambians off go hungry and the young and growing population isn't just affecting family resources it's creating bigger challenges - with no money to bathe these schools this one has three thousand students and only twenty six classrooms like many others in The Gambia it's had to adopt a to shift system past the children come to school in the morning and the other half in the afternoon with a shortage of teachers some have to work more than 12 hours a day and all this a very limited learning here so these are formal usted books this is further studies we have to have only 11 of them we need about 45 textbook and we have only 11 SES language English also will add textbook mathematics and all the Soviets are sort of for design this English this the one I use without English textbooks this one I use science we are given under a very very old something us are are broken they're old yeah very old but lack of books isn't the only problem this block of sex toilet has to serve the entire school the ratio is one is the 250 which is offered so during the break period you can find a long queue of 20 30 50 children all ready to use it hello facility at the same time so I think there is real need to work hard as quickly as possible because it is becoming a health hazard more people also use for resources 20 years ago this land was covered with forest today it's only fit for passing herds of nomadic goats and this is one of the reasons it's become so degraded everyday vast numbers of trees are chopped down and taken out of the forest destined to become firewood for Gambia's growing urban population the situation is so serious that the present rate of destruction nearly all Gambia's forests disappear within 50 years [Music] today Gambians are amongst the poorest people in the world but despite meager resources with the help of government policies and foreign aid they are meeting the challenges created by their youthful population and the most important challenge of all is slowing the growth rate down I'll talk with my wife about that we could have stopped it now really is very very happy about it she is very very happy money you may not want to talk about it but for the first time in his life Jame sunny who goes white started using contraception for the government it's another success story brought about in part by a monk or awareness campaign okay according upon men to one of music oh yeah mullah wati wati below physical note on this answer made by the Gambian family planning authority is one of many TV adverts that are broadcast every day in an effort to raise awareness of contraception but not everyone in The Gambia has access to a television so the awareness campaign uses different methods to get through to people in sir singer Tay and his family lived 200 miles upriver in a remote part of the country near gorge times they get their information via the radio and right now they're listening to a weekly program called encounter the phone in topic is flowy planning but in rural areas like these the average family lives on just a few dollars a week and it's no good raising awareness of different types of contraception if people simply can't afford them and that's why working together with a non-governmental organization or NGO called futures the Gambian authorities are promoting a new development concept called social marketing so marketing content of putting out products into the t'market sector so that you eat this access so that you you bring the products for the people every week the futures team delivers thousands of contraceptives to pharmacies across the Gambia the price is subsidized by the World Health Organization and that means that even the very poorest people can afford them in the first eight months the projects of nearly half a million condoms and packets of pills quite an achievement in the country with a population are just one and a half million there's more people certainly wouldn't you have multiple open to [ __ ] even men also in the case of condoms men always women actually maybe because of the campaign which is going on here the awareness of the importance of family planning and so forth formally people we are not aware of the importance of them so I think actually the company has going to beat a lot hello good evening businesses welcome to our weekly function will be welcome to finally coming to life on the first video of a man - two years in Italian researcher particle tonight we will be responding about family sentiment assistant position in the awareness campaign and subsidized contraception are already having an effect the population growth rate has fallen from 4.2 percent in 1993 to about 3 percent in 2005 but reducing the birth rate isn't just about providing affordable contraception okay my first wife she has she has seven kids okay Phyllis two is already with five Marty moment okay the second wife also to here nine kilos one the rest are here if you think jammy seems a move by the death of three of his children that may be because in The Gambia it's a very common occurrence one in ten children die before their fifth birthday families often have more children as they know some will die young on it to combat this trend the government has launched a major child health program were both this clinic a mile or so from Jamie's house in Sarah Kunda has been extended and refurbished with the help of funding from the Canadian government it now provides basic health care for 50,000 people many of them children but reducing infant mortality is about preventing disease as well as treating it every child has access to free vaccinations and we do have a schedule of all the vaccinations we do vaccinate against you know six to seven preventable childhood illnesses including you know tuberculosis whooping cough and measles yellow fever hepatitis B and so on the countrywide vaccination program has already begun to bring the infant mortality rate down but reducing the birth rate isn't just about improving the health of Gambia's children naima tray era is the duty nurse at a private maternity clinic here they offer a range of services aimed at improving the health of expectant mothers we help them to to to take care of themselves we educate them on on their physical well-being and sometimes we'll help them and cancel them on how to nurture themselves and their families we are going to deliver what now yes in the 1990s Gambia had a total fertility rate or TFR of seven in other words during her reproductive life the average Gambian woman would have had seven children as well as providing medical care to make birth safer centers like this one encourage women to space their births to allow their bodies time to recover we always to get them to show them the importance of the spacing because if you don't stay still you always every two years one year you have a child you know the other one will not have a good head and you will be able to take care of that your your child the one you have so we always educate them also and that is so that their children can have health and they also can be healthy healthy mothers and taking calculated the center also offers counseling to women and in a country where until recently talking about women's health was largely taboo attitudes are changing remarkably quickly men they are down there standing now accepting what many many means they bring down they are unwise they even tell the wife sometimes they even gives tell the world that you should go to family planning yes they send them for our service they send their wives and they give them money for a fare to pay for books and sometimes they evening escort them it's still early days but better direct care for women encouraging spacing and improving infant health care already appear to be having an effect if you look at the total fertility rate it took a downward trend to fix in year 2000 and we are about to conduct the next national demographic and health service and I wouldn't be surprised you know to see that things are beginning to stabilize but of course it will take some time and the implications of course if we do not have it stabilized I mean it will be war for our economies because the little money that the state should spend on development projects will have to be spent on other social you know projects for this kind of situation whether urban or rural nearly all Gambians use firewood for cooking they also use wood for housing fencing and furniture as the population grows so too does demand for this limited resource but this is just one of the reasons that Gambia is being deforested at an alarming rate at the turn of the century most of the country was covered in thick forests since then more than two-thirds or about 7,000 square kilometers of forest have disappeared but with financial and technical help from the German government the Gambian authorities have begun to act launching a forest management plan that it's hoped will stop depletion and even begin restoring some of the degraded areas [Music] music and dong are just two underway the forest educators get villagers to think about the causes of deforestation the ideas they talk about include over grazing clearing land for cultivation and bush fires if they're successful the villagers attending this meeting will eventually be given full ownership of their own community forest by helping the people who live in the bush to manage the forest themselves the Gambian government hopes to slow or even halts the rate of deforestation the forest educators also teach people to make better use of the many resources the forest has to offer they've even begun trying to reverse some of the damage that's already been done this is one of a number of government owned and run forests parks these protected areas are being regenerated and it's illegal to graze cattle or take firewood this is schedule Senegal iNSYS I mean come on Leo coil jello in The Gambia I mean normally before the planting season we come out in the money coming in the forest parks to scout for the graded site so that we can do ended land planting so as to posted it in a reason and then Nedley please more dense it viable tree species so that is why the seedlings here it was planted during the last planting season from um in a middle of July up to a leaders of others by returning forests to community ownership and running planting schemes in forests parks the authorities have slowed the rate of destruction but as Gambia's population continues to grow the future of the forest depends on the next generation and many believe the key to success lies in providing them with a good education as one of the poorest 50 countries in the world Gambia has a GDP or gross domestic product of about a thousand pounds per person in order to get by many families rely on income from their children and one in three between the ages of 10 and 14 are working in the 1990s only 61% of girls attended primary school and three out of four women were unable to read or write but thanks to a government campaign all that's beginning to change people have become more and more aware of the fact that if you educate a man you are educating one person but if you educate a woman you educate amazing so that is why education is taking a new tone now education is the key of the world education is the key of the war yeah if you educate it you will mind to have any work if anybody if the work from you that's the most important one look at myself - I'm not so educated because if you have English very poor because of I can afford my my father can't pay my school with our friend - so you can see I have same problem now so I wouldn't like my kids to have this kind of problem - Jaime's daughter's Meraki Helen and mama mama still do the chores like fetching drinking water cleaning washing cooking and looking up a younger brothers and sisters but unlike their mothers they also go to school and that means they're much more likely to have fewer healthier children people are becoming more and more aware of the funding the more children you have the more it is difficult to give them the right type of education so we have to bring in the family planning concept to reduce have smaller families to give them good education to give them the right type of education that is needed for them to be able to take care of themselves when they grow this is the Kuta lower basic schools where some of jammas children go in the last 10 years attendance here is almost doubled despite meager resources with careful management and helped from foreign NGOs the school is able to offer a basic education to more than 3,000 children what we are working now is quality how do we maintain quality education how do we give quality education to our children because without quality education we are going nowhere and to provide quality education it needs the resources it needs manpower and all that is money is expensive and third world countries don't have enough money to meet those challenges with funding from the World Food Program all the children who come to school also get a daily meal of rice and beans and for some this will be the only proper meal of the day despite the lack of resources and other challenges created by Gambia's young and growing population there's little doubt that these children are much better educated than their parents something which everyone agrees is vital as they're the ones will be the decision makers of tomorrow shaping Gambia's future and place in the world [Music] when our magic it's Friday again and prayers are over JAMA is at the funeral of a village elder in keeping with local Muslim tradition women don't attend any part of a ceremony but religious attitudes are beginning to change especially when it comes to family planning most religious leaders used to be against all forms of contraception the Prophet peace be upon him said is afraid of population growth that is getting too much of children without means to support them but now God the Almighty has helped us to have very simple way of spacing that is the depressant contraceptive that we can use without having any problems so Islam will always support that most men largely remain the decision-makers family planning is no longer a taboo subject sometimes they even they discuss openly with their husbands and the husband's are Brenda Lee we feel different before that it was not happen but now they found themselves and ask for the sale today information about family planning is everywhere even in youth clubs something that used to be unthinkable the results are already beginning to show population growth has slowed to just under 3% but Gambia's children remain amongst the poorest in the world and they're not alone across Africa population growth and poverty go hand in hand and local initiatives international aid and Deborah's begins to make a difference and if this trend continues and perhaps the next generation of children will have a future that's about more than just struggling to get by no marketing event regarding what everybody [Music]

Transcript for:Population Growth and Development in The Gambia

Transcript for:
Population Growth and Development in The Gambia