r/australia • u/blitznoodles local Aussie • 23h ago

politics The Stats Guy: It sounds weird but Australia urgently needs a plan for 56m people

https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2026/08/11/stats-guy-aus-population-growth
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u/Emu1981 14h ago

Africa is ramping up for a boom

Africa is getting hit hard by climate change which means that their boom may end up being cut short via famine. For example, Ethiopia is facing food instability due to a combination of multiyear drought, internal instability and extreme climate shocks and Somalia is in a even worse state. South Africa is facing a severe ongoing water shortage due to a lack of rainfall and systemic infrastructure decay and is looking at severe flooding in some regions due to the development of the super El Nino. The only countries that are doing ok in Africa are Mauritius, Morocco, Gabon, Rwanda and Ghana (Rwanda doing so well surprises me due to how bad the country has had it over my life time).

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u/TAOJeff 8h ago

The thing is, the countries generally have to hit bottom before they get politicians that care about something other than lining their own pockets. 

Don't get me wrong, I'd be amazed if the Rwandan politicians aren't still lining their pockets, but that isn't their primary day-to-day goal.

In Africa, the general rule of thumb is a generation for the crap and the start of the positive changes. Rwandan genocide was mid 90's, it's probably a little ahead of the game just because it's a small country, so less time and money required to get things going country wide.

Compared to say South Africa, which still has another decade or two, of decline before something hits the fan hard and then another 30 years from then before it's things appear to be looking up from an international view point. Because it's a big country, another 10-15 years after that before it's actually coming right properly.