Greetings from The Gambia. How is everyone at Ecclesall Infant 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 a 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

We have been learning about The Gambian population and the

population of earth. We want to share with you

what we found out.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.