UNFPA tasks gov't to tackle fertility problems of Cameroonians.

This was during the launching of the 2025 State of the 2025 World Population Report.

The diplomat told Cameroonians that there is presently a global fertility crisis which requires governments to pay adequate attention by accompanying their citizens to work towards ameliorating the problems.

This, he said, is why UNFPA has chosen to launch the report under the theme: “The real fertility crisis: The pursuit of reproductive agency in a changing world”.

Dr Koffi asserted that in 2025, the global fertility rate is making headlines, as in many countries, declining birth rates are leading to alarm over population collapse.

He said in an attempt to address these demographic changes, some governments are employing drastic measures to persuade women and young people to have more children.

The assumption being that young people are deliberately choosing to have fewer children, while women are increasingly expecting to be given incentives by the government for them to make reproductive decisions that favour the bearing of many or more children.

Without this, Dr Koffi said government’s efforts to meet expected fertility targets, not only in Cameroon but across the globe, would always be abortive.

Cameroon remains committed to achieving targets

In his response to the concerns raised by UNFPA, the Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development in charge of Planning, Paul Tasong, said Cameroon remains committed to attaining the benchmarks set, not only by UNFPA, but by all international organisations in the drive to make the world a better place for all.

Minister Tasong said the government had taken a number of measures since 2014, when the world agreed that men and women should be given a free hand in deciding family size and as to how many children each family would like to have.

He accepted that people should be given the freedom to procreate, but this must be accompanied by people’s capacity to take care of the children. In terms of the provision of adequate basic facilities, like food, shelter and clothing. 

Minister Tasong said the ability to educate the child or children to a reasonable level, provide them with adequate health facilities, and other amenities that ward off misery and endemic poverty.

He government had since adopted gender-sensitive governance and budgeting as a norm. But for economic reasons, he said many people are no longer able to assume their reproductive rights, which is no fault of their own.

Tasong stressed that every state budget is now done in a way that women in general and young girls in particular are taken care of as far as their reproductive rights are concerned.

Some highlighted realities

According to UNFPA, alarmingly high proportions of adults in the world today, both men and women, are unable to realise their fertility intensions. With only 20% of reproductive age adults believing that they can ever have the number of children they desire.

Nearly one in three women experience unintended pregnancy; one in four, unable to have a child at an age they expected; and 39% complain that financial constraints would affect their desire to have their desired family size.

Generally, and across the whole world, the Fund states that more people want more children than they are able to have, even in lowest fertility countries.

The UNFPA concludes that the real crisis that the world is facing is not under population, but a crisis of reproductive agency. 

In every country studied, regardless of its total fertility rate, the most consequential reproductive decision a human being can make – whether, when and with whom to have a child – is being undermined, and in some cases outrightly denied, UNFPA stated.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3540 of Thursday August 21, 2025