Figure 7.25: Population pyramids for Nigeria and South Africa. Note that the two pyramids are at the same scale. (A) Nigeria had a population of 170.1 million people in 2012 and a growth rate of 2.6 percent, as indicated by its very wide pyramid base. It has the largest population on the continent, nearly twice that of Ethiopia, which has the second-largest population. (B) South Africa, on the other hand, had a population of 51.1 million in 2012 and a growth rate of only 0.9 percent; its population is beginning to decline, as shown by the shrinking of the pyramid base. The decline is in part due to the AIDS epidemic.

[Source consulted: International Data Base, U.S. Census Bureau, at http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/informationGateway.php]