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    How to grapple with soaring world population? An answer from Botswana

    Botswana has one of the fastest falling fertility rates. As global population expands, there are lessons to be learned
    by Nicola Davis in Gaborone and Gasita, Botswana Oct 10, 2018 6 minutes
    The average Botswanan woman now has fewer than three children. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

    At the end of a dusty road in the southern African hinterland sits a small concrete building with an orange door. It is a structure so modest and remote that it is hard to believe it could hold lessons for addressing one of the world’s biggest challenges.

    The unit is the medical hub for Gasita, a village of 2,000 people in the south of Botswana. Inside one of the rooms, pharmaceutical supplies are neatly stashed on shelves while a photograph of the country’s president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, is propped up on a counter next to a window that is ajar, letting in a warm breeze.

    Outposts like these – offering family planning services, contraception, education – have helped bring about one of the world’s most remarkable demographic shifts. In a continent where fertility rates are the highest in the world and populations are soaring, Botswana has a different story to tell.

    Fifty years ago, Botswanan women would have seven children on average. Now they have fewer than three. It’s one of the fastest

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