# **Family Planning: A Justifiable Priority?**

The oriority accorded to family planning in Africa has always varied. During the 1960s and early 1970s, it was argued that family planning was a veiled attempt by white races to eliminate or keep down the numbers of non-white races: 'the genocide theory'. This controversy has abated, somewhat, as national governments have themselves begun to design and provide family planning services. Nevertheless, a number of factors still bear on the ethics of family planning in the region, and show the need of a sensitive approach. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, population programmes were advocated in some international aid quarters as a panacea for the ills of many developing countries. This disproportionate advocacy over other development goals led African intellectuals and policymakers to decry what they saw as assistance to cut down numbers rather than to generate equitable development. A subsequent shift towards more integrated development assistance has partly redressed this position.

Africa is in many ways a special case. Its countries' boundaries were drawn on political rather than national grounds. Apart from their racial and international tensions, countries have their national priorities among agricultural, health-care and other development goals. It is difficult therefore to discuss an 'African' context for family planning priorities. Yet is sometimes argued that population density figures prove that population is not an issue in Africa. It is often portrayed as an underpopulated region with a vast amount of untapped land. Average - population density is low less than one-fifth of Asia's. However, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, some countries cannot produce enough food to sustain their populations. Of course, some, such as the Zaire and the Central African Republic, have extensive areas of underused land, and account for almost one-third of the region's land but only one-fifth of its population. However, for political and social reasons, migration from overpopulated to underpopulated countries in Africa is becoming impractical as a means of accommodating population growth. Bringing new land into production may be too costly for some economies. Pressures to use land for cash crops may worsen the situation in some countries. In any event, the argument that Africa is sparsely populated and does not need family planning is simplistic. Food self-sufficiency is not .Lie African's only social aspiration.

Another argument used against family planning is that people are the ultimate resource, that every mouth to feed comes with a pair of hands to work, and that some countries with high population densities, such as Hong Kong, 'prove' that family planning programmes are not necessary. They prove nothing of the kind: education, health and employment needs of a rapidly growing population are difficult to meet. In the I 980s, the rationales of providing family planning programmes have been reassessed. The health rationale of family planning, together with the promotion of the human right to family planning, have become central to the consensus that family planning has a part in development