When will Ethiopia overtake Brazil in population?

Brazil's fertility has fallen to 1.6 births per woman, and the UN projects its population to peak around 2042 and then decline, to 164 million by 2100. Ethiopia is growing from a much younger base: a median age of 19 and 3.9 births per woman. Brazil is about 81.2 million ahead today, and in 1990 it had about 3.2 times Ethiopia's population, but the projection has the two level around the end of the 2040s.

Ethiopia is projected to overtake Brazil in total population around 2049. At the crossover, both countries sit at roughly 219 million people. Today Brazil is still larger, but the trend lines are converging and the order is set to flip within a generation.

The reason is a tale of two trajectories. Ethiopia is on course to more than double over the century, moving from about 130 million in 2024 toward 366 million by 2100. Brazil, by contrast, is projected to fall sharply, going from roughly 212 million to 164 million over the same period. Differences in fertility and age structure (Ethiopia's median age near 19 versus Brazil's near 34 today) explain much of the divergence.

Crossovers like this one are how the global population ranking is quietly rewritten. As faster-growing populations climb the table and slower-growing or shrinking ones slip down, the list of the world's largest countries in 2100 will look markedly different from today's. The 2049 crossing is one of the clearer signals of that shift.

As with all long-range projections, the exact year carries uncertainty. Under the UN's high and low fertility scenarios the crossover could arrive earlier or later, and the figures here follow the medium variant. Still, the direction of travel, Ethiopia rising relative to Brazil, is robust across the plausible range of outcomes.