With one-third of the world's children in 2050 predicted to be born in Africa, the international community must invest in their parents now, not down the road, UNICEF's executive director said in an interview with The Japan Times.
"Population growth tends to diminish as poverty diminishes," Anthony Lake of the U.N. Children's Fund said Saturday, while attending the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development. "The problem is, in a lot of other areas of the world, population rates are going down faster than in Africa. So the proportion of the world's population is going to be more and more concentrated in Africa.
"In 1950, one in 10 babies was born in Africa. Today, it's a little less than one out of every four. In 2050, it will be one out of every three.