Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) released its annual report on birth rate in Egypt, declaring that the country has managed to lower its birth rates from 28.6 births per 1000 people in 2016 to 26.8 births per 1000 people in 2017.
The total tally of births in 2017 amounted to 2.55 million, with females surpassing males recording 27 births per 1000 people, compared to 26.6 male births.
The report supports an earlier one which was released by the Ministry of Health on their Facebook page in February announcing that birth rates in Egypt have seen a decrease by 4 million babies in the past three years.
In its statement, the ministry declared that, “2015 witnessed 6.68 million birthrate. In 2016, the number went down to 2.6 million. And for the third year straight, the birthrate plummeted to 2.55 million.”
The statement added that such decline was proof that “Egypt has a proper and successful strategy to reduce birthrates.”
The Egyptian government has spared no effort to promote the importance of a lower population, as the current Egyptian population causes a strain on resources. Ministry of Social Solidarity released on Wednesday “Two is Enough” campaign, aiming to encourage people to have a maximum of two children pre family.
The campaign mainly aims to change people’s perception in rural areas that having small families through birth control is religiously forbidden, hoping by that to reduce birth rate in rural areas to 2.4.
Overpopulation has been a growing problem in Egypt for a long time. In December 2017, the United Nation released figures expecting the Egyptian population to hit 200 million by the year 2100, reported BBC. According to a statement read by General Abu Bakr Al-Gindi, Egypt’s head of CAPMAS in 2014, population growth in Egypt have been out of control for years.
A boom occurred in 2013, with further complicated the problem. The number of new births that year only reached 2.6 million. According to the statement, the boom came at a time where Egypt had a difficulty accommodating the the existing population, failing to provide their existing needs.
