The President of the Republic of Tanzania John Pombe Magufuli has urged women in the country to stop using contraceptive methods so as to increase the population of Tanzania.
While addressing a public rally, President Magufuli noted that the people of Tanzanian need to multiply without being afraid of how the children will be taken care of adding that family planning methods were a way of making people ‘lazy’.
According to Magufuli, use of birth control methods was a bad concept and that Tanzanians could still prosper without them.
“You have cattle. You are big farmers. You can feed your children. Why then resort to birth control? This is my opinion, I see no reason to control births in Tanzania,” said Magufuli.
The President added that having traveled across different continents, he had seen the negative effects of contraceptives noting that some of the countries that have embraced the concept are being faced with low population growths thus affecting their labor markets, which to him is not healthy for the growth of any country.
Ever since he took over office as the President of Tanzania, Magufuli has on several occasions been open to the increase in population issue.
The recent sentiments were reflective of a similar notion he had in 2016 after he introduced free primary and secondary school education in Tanzania. Here, he noted that Tanzanian were free to give birth to as many children as they could since education was free.
Even as Magufuli calls for an end on the use of birth control methods, he was the same one who gave a directive in 2017 proposing that young girls who got pregnant not to be allowed back to school. What will happen when more girls get pregnant in case the ‘no use of contraceptives’ concept is picked up?
Tanzania has a population of around 53 million people, with 49 percent of them living on less than US$2 a day. On average a Tanzanian woman has five children each, which is among the highest rates in the world.
According to UNAIDS, an estimated 1,400,000 people living with HIV in Tanzania, with an adult prevalence of 4.7 percent.
The United Nations released a report which stated that the population of Africa will double to around 2.5 billion people by 2050.
Most African countries are campaigning towards more use of family planning methods in a move to curb high poverty levels that have been linked to high populations in most third world countries.