DR Congo has more babies each year than the EU
Live births per year, millions, DR Congo vs the 27 EU countries and the US, 1990–2023. UN estimates.
- 1. By 2100, more than 1 in 3 people will be African
- 2. Nearly half the world's under-25s will be African by 2100
- 3. DR Congo is projected to outgrow the US by 2100
- 4. Kinshasa will soon be bigger than Paris and London combined
- 5. Two-thirds of the world's mobile money moves in Africa
- 6. Volcanic heat makes nearly 45% of the power Kenya generates
- 7. Africa's solar imports more than doubled since early 2024
- 8. DR Congo mines three-quarters of the world's cobalt
- 9. Most people in Africa are still offline
- 10. Africa formally recycles less than 1% of its e-waste
- 11. Ethiopia added over a third of Africa's new renewable power
- 12. Nigeria's cities now hold more people than Japan's
- 13. Sudan now has the world's most people displaced at home
- 14. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
- 15. Six of the ten fastest-growing big cities are African
- 16. Africa now has more hungry people than Asia
- 17. Six in ten child deaths now happen in sub-Saharan Africa
- 18. Rwanda spread electricity faster than any country since 2014
- 19. Nigeria now eats more rice than Japan
- 20. More sub-Saharan Africans now have mobile money than bank accounts
- 21. Sub-Saharan Africa's cities now hold more people than Latin America's
- 22. DR Congo tripled its copper mining in ten years
- 23. Nitrogen dioxide over Khartoum fell 39% after war began
- 24. Countries mostly without electricity fell from 33 to 15
- 25. Seven in ten West African mobile money accounts sit idle
- 26. Nigeria became the third-biggest sender of students abroad
- 27. Guinea overtook Australia as the world's biggest bauxite miner
- 28. DR Congo passed Chile in refined copper
- 29. Burkina Faso now sends half its exports to the UAE
- 30. Nouakchott's mobile internet sped from Africa's slowest to top 30
- 31. Nigeria now imports more solar panels than generators
- 32. Zimbabwe climbed to fourth among the world's lithium miners
- 33. Services now employ twice as many Ghanaian women as farms
- 34. Sub-Saharan Africa doubled its grain, mostly by farming more land
- 35. Sub-Saharan Africa added more rural people than the whole world
- 36. France fell from first to third among Côte d'Ivoire's suppliers
- 37. China's car sales to Ethiopia are now mostly electric
- 38. Guinea rose from 17th to second for investment in Africa
- 39. Africa now mines three-quarters of the world's manganese
- 40. Tanzania rose from no graphite to world's third-biggest miner
- 41. DR Congo has more babies each year than the EU
babies were born in DR Congo in 2023, up from 1.68 million in 1990, against 3.75 million in the 27 EU countries.
is when UN estimates put DR Congo's births past the EU's, by a whisker; it passed the US (3.66 million in 2023) in 2018.
of the world's babies were born in DR Congo in 2023, nearly triple its 1.2% share in 1990: tomorrow's young workers are increasingly Congolese.
the numbers & method
| Year | DR Congo (M) | European Union (M) | United States (M) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 1.68 | 5.12 | 4.17 |
| 1995 | 2.10 | 4.49 | 3.85 |
| 2000 | 2.29 | 4.45 | 3.96 |
| 2005 | 2.57 | 4.44 | 4.06 |
| 2010 | 3.01 | 4.59 | 3.98 |
| 2012 | 3.22 | 4.40 | 3.94 |
| 2013 | 3.31 | 4.29 | 3.93 |
| 2014 | 3.41 | 4.32 | 3.98 |
| 2015 | 3.50 | 4.29 | 3.98 |
| 2016 | 3.60 | 4.34 | 3.95 |
| 2017 | 3.74 | 4.29 | 3.87 |
| 2018 | 3.86 | 4.21 | 3.82 |
| 2019 | 3.96 | 4.13 | 3.77 |
| 2020 | 4.05 | 4.04 | 3.64 |
| 2021 | 4.16 | 4.06 | 3.68 |
| 2022 | 4.26 | 3.87 | 3.75 |
| 2023 | 4.37 | 3.75 | 3.66 |
Claim types Estimate · Interpretation
UN DESA Population Division, World Population Prospects 2024, total number of live births (both sexes), estimates 1990–2023 (2023 is the last estimate year of this edition; later years are medium-variant projections and are not used). Read from UN DESA via the progrss vault (loaded from population.un.org/wpp, retrieved 10 Nov 2026). EU = sum of the WPP estimates for the 27 current EU member states (progrss calculation); Eurostat's own count of registered EU births in 2023 is slightly lower (about 3.7 million). DR Congo has no complete birth registration, so its figures are UN estimates from censuses and surveys; the EU and US figures come from the same WPP method. DR Congo passed the EU by a thin margin in 2020 (4.05 vs 4.04 million, the EU dipped that year) and has stayed ahead since: 4.16 vs 4.06 million in 2021, 4.26 vs 3.87 in 2022, 4.37 vs 3.75 in 2023. It passed the United States in 2018 (3.86 vs 3.82 million). World share = DR Congo's births over the sum of 215 countries and areas: 1.17% in 1990, 3.31% in 2023 (progrss calculation).
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