Kenya: MPs urged to boost family planning programmes

MPs are among the first people to be targeted in a new campaign to control Kenya's ballooning birth rate.


The National Coordinating Agency for Population and Development recently held a meeting with the MPs to urge them to boost its budget in the next financial year to help curb the rapid population growth.

The agency said country is recording an annual population growth of nearly three per cent, almost double the 1.7 per cent gross domestic product growth over the same period.

NCAPD director Boniface K'Oyugi said the average births per woman, at 4.6, were too high.

"We must urgently curb our high fertility levels if the economy is to hold," he said, adding that the population was growing by one million people annually.

Dr K'Oyugi said the agency was seeking funding to roll out massive programmes to help control the increase in population, hence its targeting the MPs.

According to Dr K'Oyugi, the country's population would have doubled to 64 million by 2030 when the government completes implementing its economic blueprint, Vision 2030.

He said the agency plans to initiate a more aggressive exercise that would boost family planning programmes.

Funding for the family planning programmes has been low as resources were diverted to fighting the spread of HIV/Aids.

Dr K'Oyugi said the agency was concerned that the high population growth rate would soon put a strain on government resources.

"We must invest in population programmes if we are to guarantee a good future for our people," he said.

Source: All Africa, 13 April 2010 or http://www.ippf.org/