plate 383 · 2023 data

Sub-Saharan Africa added over a third of working-age growth

Change in people aged 15–64 by region, 2013–2023, millions; +502 million worldwide. UN estimates via World Bank.

Africa's century
  1. 1. By 2100, more than 1 in 3 people will be African
  2. 2. Nearly half the world's under-25s will be African by 2100
  3. 3. DR Congo is projected to outgrow the US by 2100
  4. 4. Kinshasa will soon be bigger than Paris and London combined
  5. 5. Two-thirds of the world's mobile money moves in Africa
  6. 6. Volcanic heat makes nearly 45% of the power Kenya generates
  7. 7. Africa's solar imports more than doubled since early 2024
  8. 8. DR Congo mines three-quarters of the world's cobalt
  9. 9. Most people in Africa are still offline
  10. 10. Africa formally recycles less than 1% of its e-waste
  11. 11. Ethiopia added over a third of Africa's new renewable power
  12. 12. Nigeria's cities now hold more people than Japan's
  13. 13. Sudan now has the world's most people displaced at home
  14. 14. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
  15. 15. Six of the ten fastest-growing big cities are African
  16. 16. Africa now has more hungry people than Asia
  17. 17. Six in ten child deaths now happen in sub-Saharan Africa
  18. 18. Rwanda spread electricity faster than any country since 2014
  19. 19. Nigeria now eats more rice than Japan
  20. 20. More sub-Saharan Africans now have mobile money than bank accounts
  21. 21. Sub-Saharan Africa's cities now hold more people than Latin America's
  22. 22. DR Congo tripled its copper mining in ten years
  23. 23. Nitrogen dioxide over Khartoum fell 39% after war began
  24. 24. Countries mostly without electricity fell from 33 to 15
  25. 25. Seven in ten West African mobile money accounts sit idle
  26. 26. Nigeria became the third-biggest sender of students abroad
  27. 27. Guinea overtook Australia as the world's biggest bauxite miner
  28. 28. DR Congo passed Chile in refined copper
  29. 29. Burkina Faso now sends half its exports to the UAE
  30. 30. Nouakchott's mobile internet sped from Africa's slowest to top 30
  31. 31. Nigeria now imports more solar panels than generators
  32. 32. Zimbabwe climbed to fourth among the world's lithium miners
  33. 33. Services now employ twice as many Ghanaian women as farms
  34. 34. Sub-Saharan Africa doubled its grain, mostly by farming more land
  35. 35. Sub-Saharan Africa added more rural people than the whole world
  36. 36. France fell from first to third among Côte d'Ivoire's suppliers
  37. 37. China's car sales to Ethiopia are now mostly electric
  38. 38. Guinea rose from 17th to second for investment in Africa
  39. 39. Africa now mines three-quarters of the world's manganese
  40. 40. Tanzania rose from no graphite to world's third-biggest miner
  41. 41. DR Congo has more babies each year than the EU
  42. 42. More Malawians go online than have electricity at home
  43. 43. Nigeria is now Brazil's biggest supplier of urea fertiliser
  44. 44. 19 sub-Saharan countries are now mostly urban, up from 7
  45. 45. Sub-Saharan Africa added 13 million births a year since 2000
  46. 46. Sub-Saharan Africa now holds 88% of people without electricity
  47. 47. Malawi's life expectancy rose 21 years, more than anywhere
  48. 48. Ethiopia's wheat harvest nearly doubled, mostly from higher yields
  49. 49. In purchasing power, Egypt overtook Nigeria as Africa's biggest economy
  50. 50. Kenyans abroad send home more than Kenya receives in aid
  51. 51. Africa tops urea supply in 12 countries, up from six
  52. 52. Lusaka now outnumbers Zambia's 13 other cities of 2000
  53. 53. Niger's onion harvest tripled, entering the world's top ten
  54. 54. Sub-Saharan Africa added over a third of working-age growth
183M

People aged 15–64 added in sub-Saharan Africa in 2013–2023: 36.5% of the world's 502 million, from a region holding 11% of them in 2013.

−11M

China's working-age population shrank over the decade; all of East Asia and the Pacific added 35 million, 7% of the world's growth.

2 in 3

Of the decade's added working-age people were in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia: that is where the world's new labour force and young customers are coming from.

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators: Population ages 15–64, total (SP.POP.1564.TO), 2023
the numbers & method

Claim types Estimate · Interpretation

Estimate. World Bank World Development Indicators, Population ages 15–64, total (SP.POP.1564.TO), WDI, last updated 11 Nov 2026, based on UN DESA World Population Prospects 2024 estimates; read from the World Bank API via the progrss vault (GUIDELINES §4.11; source wb-wdi passes value checks, 21 matches, 0 mismatches). 2023 is the latest estimate year: the World Bank's 2024 and 2025 values are UN projections and are not used. Regions are the World Bank's seven geographic regions, which add up to the World row. People aged 15–64, 2013 → 2023: World 4,736,830,561 → 5,238,831,212 (+502.0 million); Sub-Saharan Africa 518,942,154 → 702,400,392 (+183.46 M, 36.5% of world growth); South Asia 970,462,133 → 1,124,957,527 (+154.50 M, 30.8%); Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan 412,659,726 → 498,941,448 (+86.28 M, 17.2%); Latin America & Caribbean 402,244,571 → 444,516,718 (+42.27 M, 8.4%); East Asia & Pacific 1,589,978,726 → 1,625,101,743 (+35.12 M, 7.0%), of which China 986,145,060 → 974,720,366 (−11.42 M) and the rest of the region +46.55 M (a progrss calculation); North America 235,931,115 → 245,010,886 (+9.08 M); Europe & Central Asia 606,612,136 → 597,902,498 (−8.71 M). Parts add up to the world change. Shares are progrss calculations: Sub-Saharan Africa held 11.0% of the world's working-age people in 2013 and 13.4% in 2023; Sub-Saharan Africa plus South Asia made 67.3% of the decade's growth. Same-method control: every region and the world total come from the same UN estimate series. Working age (15–64) is a population measure, not the number of people in work. Takeaway 3 is progrss's interpretation. Licence: CC BY 4.0 (World Bank).

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