Ivory Coast: Crowd in Abengourou

Africa has 800 million inhabitants, 13% of all humanity. This colorful crowd, waving enthusiastically to the photographer, was photographed in Abengourou, in Eastern Ivory Coast. These children and adolescents remind us of the country's youthfulness: as in most of the African continent, 40% of the population is under 15 years. The country's birth rate is 5.1 children per woman, which is representative of the average of the average for the continent (the world average is 2.8). Modernization and the development of cultural and socio-economic programmes are graduallly reducing the birth rate, but it will take several decades for the African population to stabilize. The ravages of the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa (home to 70% of the total 36.1 million people infected in the world) will have a severe impact on the region's demography: every day in Africa 6000 people die of the AIDS virus and another 11000 become infected.