Topics
Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Cameroon and 
Niger, side by side
Cameroon in 2026: half the people are older than 19. Niger: half are older than 17.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Cameroon 28,372,687 people · Niger 26,159,867
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
CMR × NER · 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
- 41
- Aged 15 to 64
- 56
- Aged 65 and over
- 3
- Children, under 15
- 46
- Aged 15 to 64
- 51
- Aged 65 and over
- 3
CMR × NER · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
Cameroon is at about 4.1 children for each woman, at this year's rates; Niger is at about 5.6. Life expectancy at birth this year: about 65 years in Cameroon, about 62 in Niger.
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.
CMR × NER · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Cameroon is the larger of the two, with about as many people as Niger: 30.6 million to 28.8 million.
Cameroon's population is 7.1 times what it was in 1950; Niger's population is 11.1 times what it was in 1950.
Cameroon's population is still growing in 2100; Niger's population is still growing in 2100. The UN expects Niger to have more people than Cameroon from 2040. In 2100: 88.9 million in Cameroon, 90.8 million in Niger (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Cameroon: people | Niger: people | Cameroon: half older than | Niger: half older than | Cameroon: children per woman | Niger: children per woman | Cameroon: life expectancy | Niger: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 4.33008 million | 2.59781 million | 20.3 | 15.0 | 5.73 | 7.56 | 33.1 | 35.9 |
| 1960 | 5.15906 million | 3.50505 million | 20.5 | 15.4 | 5.72 | 7.53 | 34.7 | 36.2 |
| 1970 | 6.44979 million | 4.65027 million | 19.1 | 15.8 | 6.20 | 7.51 | 48.0 | 35.9 |
| 1980 | 8.51222 million | 6.13597 million | 17.7 | 16.3 | 6.61 | 7.78 | 50.9 | 39.3 |
| 1990 | 11.3318 million | 8.28606 million | 16.7 | 16.5 | 6.36 | 7.81 | 54.4 | 41.7 |
| 2000 | 14.9126 million | 11.5096 million | 17.2 | 16.2 | 5.51 | 7.83 | 53.3 | 49.2 |
| 2010 | 19.6681 million | 16.5488 million | 17.8 | 15.3 | 5.15 | 7.64 | 57.0 | 57.1 |
| 2023 | 28.3727 million | 26.1599 million | 18.8 | 16.3 | 4.32 | 6.06 | 63.7 | 61.2 |
| 2030* | 33.7772 million | 32.5181 million | 19.9 | 17.4 | 3.88 | 5.08 | 65.5 | 62.8 |
| 2040* | 42.2080 million | 42.3167 million | 21.9 | 19.6 | 3.35 | 3.91 | 67.7 | 64.8 |
| 2050* | 51.0963 million | 52.5139 million | 24.1 | 22.2 | 2.96 | 3.22 | 69.5 | 66.5 |
| 2060* | 59.9609 million | 62.7243 million | 26.2 | 25.0 | 2.68 | 2.77 | 71.1 | 68.0 |
| 2070* | 68.4582 million | 72.1664 million | 28.5 | 27.9 | 2.48 | 2.47 | 72.7 | 69.4 |
| 2080* | 76.3444 million | 80.2270 million | 30.7 | 30.6 | 2.32 | 2.26 | 74.2 | 70.6 |
| 2090* | 83.2033 million | 86.4982 million | 32.9 | 33.2 | 2.19 | 2.11 | 75.7 | 71.9 |
| 2100* | 88.8757 million | 90.8193 million | 35.0 | 35.5 | 2.10 | 2.01 | 77.1 | 73.1 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
CMR − NER · 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 Cameroon and which is Niger, 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; Cameroon is drawn in solid blue squares and Niger 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
Both sides of this comparison come from the UN Population Division's World Population Prospects 2024 — the same release, the same tables, counted to 2023 and projected beyond it on the medium variant. That shared origin is what a comparison rests on.
The working behind the median age, the rounding in the “100 people” pictures and the reason the regions are kept out of the all-country views are all set out in the method.
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