Africa population

Africa is the engine of global population growth for the rest of this century. While every other region is set to peak and decline, Africa keeps growing right through 2100, more than doubling to roughly 3.8 billion people. Its share of humanity is projected to leap from under a fifth today to well over a third, so that by 2100 more than one in three people on earth will be African, the single biggest shift in the global map of population.

Africa is home to about 1.57 billion people in 2026, roughly 19% of the world total, spread across 58 countries and territories. Its most populous are Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt.

Africa is still growing and is not projected to peak before 2100. The population rises toward about 3.81 billion by 2100, +142.9% versus today. Its share of world population climbs from 19% to roughly 37%, the clearest sign of how the world's demographic centre of gravity is shifting.

These are the UN's medium-variant figures, the central scenario rather than a forecast. The further out they run the wider the plausible range, but the broad shape of Africa's century is consistent across the main variants.