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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Africa and 
China, side by side
In 2026, half of the people in Africa are older than 20. In China, half are older than 42.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Africa 1,480,770,525 people · China 1,422,584,932
How to read this: each pyramid stacks a place’s people by age — babies at the bottom, the oldest at the top, men on the left and women on the right. A wide bottom means many children; a wide top means many older people.
Each bar is a share of its own place’s people, so a small country and a large one can be read side by side.
men women projected
AGG × CHN · 2026 · age groups
If each place were 100 people
Shrink each population to 100 people and count them. Dots are children under 15, filled squares are people aged 15 to 64, and open squares are people 65 and over. The picture follows the year slider above.
- Children, under 15
- 38
- Aged 15 to 64
- 58
- Aged 65 and over
- 4
- Children, under 15
- 15
- Aged 15 to 64
- 70
- Aged 65 and over
- 15
AGG × CHN · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
If the birth rates of this year held for a whole lifetime, a woman in Africa would have about 3.9 children and a woman in China about 1.0. Around 2.1 children per woman keeps a population the same size over time, leaving migration aside. Life expectancy at birth this year: about 64 years in Africa, about 79 in China.
Children per woman, 2026
Each figure is one child: how many children a woman would have in her lifetime at that year’s rates.
The dashed line at 2.1 is about what it takes for each generation to replace the one before it, leaving migration aside.
How long a newborn can expect to live, 2026
Each block is ten years of life, if the death rates of that year stayed the same all life long.
Hatched marks are UN projections (medium variant), not measurements.
AGG × CHN · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Africa has about 10% more people than China: 1.58 billion against 1.41 billion.
Africa's population is 7.0 times what it was in 1950; China's population is 2.6 times what it was in 1950.
Looking ahead: Africa's population is still growing in 2100, and China's population peaked in 2021. In 2100: 3.81 billion in Africa, 633 million in China (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Africa: people | China: people | Africa: half older than | China: half older than | Africa: children per woman | China: children per woman | Africa: life expectancy | China: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 227.776 million | 544.044 million | 19.1 | 23.3 | 6.52 | 5.81 | 37.3 | 43.8 |
| 1960 | 283.922 million | 654.802 million | 18.5 | 20.9 | 6.64 | 4.45 | 41.4 | 33.4 |
| 1970 | 365.552 million | 823.309 million | 17.7 | 19.0 | 6.69 | 6.08 | 45.0 | 56.8 |
| 1980 | 483.051 million | 983.164 million | 17.3 | 21.9 | 6.59 | 2.74 | 49.4 | 64.2 |
| 1990 | 643.775 million | 1.15358 billion | 17.5 | 24.7 | 5.91 | 2.51 | 51.7 | 68.2 |
| 2000 | 830.583 million | 1.26958 billion | 18.1 | 30.0 | 5.20 | 1.63 | 53.7 | 72.3 |
| 2010 | 1.07222 billion | 1.35156 billion | 18.9 | 35.1 | 4.89 | 1.69 | 58.8 | 75.7 |
| 2023 | 1.48077 billion | 1.42258 billion | 20.0 | 40.1 | 4.07 | 1.00 | 63.8 | 78.0 |
| 2030* | 1.72721 billion | 1.39815 billion | 21.2 | 43.9 | 3.65 | 1.06 | 65.1 | 79.8 |
| 2040* | 2.09565 billion | 1.34282 billion | 23.3 | 49.6 | 3.15 | 1.13 | 66.8 | 81.7 |
| 2050* | 2.46665 billion | 1.26029 billion | 25.4 | 53.1 | 2.79 | 1.18 | 68.4 | 83.4 |
| 2060* | 2.82150 billion | 1.13513 billion | 27.6 | 55.7 | 2.54 | 1.23 | 69.8 | 84.9 |
| 2070* | 3.14522 billion | 998.784 million | 29.9 | 58.7 | 2.35 | 1.27 | 71.2 | 86.3 |
| 2080* | 3.42470 billion | 870.252 million | 32.1 | 62.4 | 2.21 | 1.29 | 72.4 | 87.5 |
| 2090* | 3.64905 billion | 744.903 million | 34.2 | 62.4 | 2.10 | 1.32 | 73.7 | 88.7 |
| 2100* | 3.81388 billion | 633.368 million | 36.1 | 61.7 | 2.02 | 1.34 | 74.9 | 89.8 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
AGG − CHN · 1950–2100 · every age
Which ages each place has more of
Each column is a year and each row an age, from babies at the bottom to 100 at the top. The shade of a cell shows which place has more of its people at that age — the key beside the picture tells you which shade is Africa and which is China, and the in-between shade means the same. Because it compares shares, a small place and a large one can be compared fairly.
236 countries · 1950–2100
Where they sit among all countries
Every country in the world, every year from 1950 to 2100. The grey cloud shows where most countries are; Africa is drawn in solid blue squares and China in open orange squares, so you can see whether each is ahead of the crowd, behind it or in the middle.
Apparatus
Sources and method
Every figure for Africa and China is the United Nations Population Division's, from World Population Prospects 2024: counted to 2023, and the medium projection for each year after that. Both places are taken from the same release and the same tables, which is what makes them comparable at all.
How the median age and the “100 people” pictures are worked out, and why the pictures of every country leave the regions out: how the figures here are put together.
250 comparisons have a page of their own; any other two places can be compared from the boxes at the top.
Sources: UN WPP 2024 · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries