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Greetings from The Gambia. How is everyone at Priory Fields School? And how is
the weather with you? The weather here is getting
warmer as summer approaches.
It has not rained since November now and every
where is very dry and dusty. We are waiting for the first
rains but they do not come yet. The mangos are growing
strong on the trees but they are not ready to eat yet. May
be in July.
There is even an brand new 20
dalasi note and we are told there
is going to be a 200 dalasi note. A dalasi is worth about 2 pence.
We are very excited because our
Government have just issued new bank notes.
Our old ones were looking very old and tired. The new ones have a photo of our
President on
It is estimated that in 2015 there were 7.2
billion human beings on planet earth. That is 7,200,000,000. If you
counted them at one a second it would take 288 years to count them all.
We have been learning about The Gambia population and the
population of earth. We want to share with you
what we found out.
That is a lot of mouths to feed and a lot of human
pooh to get rid of everyday. And the
population of human beings is growing fast
and may be as high as 11 billion in 2050
It is because in the developed countries like
Europe and America people are living longer.
But also in the developing countries in
places like Africa the population is growing fast too. So let us tell you a bit about the
Gambian population
In 2013 there was a census in The Gambia
and the Census officers visited each compound and they number each
one and found out about the people who live there. They have
just finished counting.
The found out that The Gambia now has a
population of 1,882,450 people. It has grown from only 315,486 in 1963. So Gambia is a small country
but is growing fast. It is estimated that by 2030 it will have doubled to 3.6
million people.
That is because like most African countries the
population here is very young. 39 per cent of the people here are aged under 15 and 58 per cent are aged 15 years to 64
years of age. That means only 3 per cent are aged 65 years or
more.
That means if you imagine that the Gambia is a village
of 100 people then 39 would be children aged 14 or less
and 58 would be adults aged 15 to 64 years and only 3
would be old people. Have a look at the chart on the
following slide. It shows the age profile of people in The
Gambia.
This chart shows the age profile of The Gambia. Can you see how many young
people there are and how few old people. That is why our
population is growing. Many young adult women have
babies.
But because we are a developing country and do
not have so many clinics and hospitals many people still
die before old age. The average life expectancy here
is only 64 years. 62 years for men and 66 years for
women. People still die of diseases like malaria
So in The Gambia there are now 64,000 births
each year but only 16,000 deaths. People
are starting to live longer here too.
Well we hope you enjoyed finding out
about The Gambia. We wonder how our
population compares with yours. How many people live in England? With 1.8 million people The Gambia is 149th in terms of size. Where
does the UK rank?
And do you know which is the biggest
country? For now we say Good bye and we
look forward to hearing from you soon.