Dec 17th 2011 | OUAGADOUGOU | from the print edition
Some Africans think they face demographic disaster, others that they could reap a demographic dividend. They will probably get neither
THE Marie Stopes clinic on the outskirts of Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, recently performed the country’s first vasectomy. It stirred a public outcry. One man said Daoude Zia, a 41-year-old teacher with four children, had let himself be “castrated”. “We must sleep with women without using contraceptives,” wrote another, “and women should throw away family planning because children are a gift of God and we must create more and more.”
