Influencing demographic dynamics in order to improve the welfare of the population is the fundamental objective of a population policy. The efficacy of a population policy cannot be satisfactorily evaluated without referring to the objectives of the overall development strategy, of which the population policy is only one component. At the time of the 1974 World Population Conference in Bucharest, the positions of the developed and developing countries were polarized. The developing countries were accused of impeding their own socioeconomic development by their high fertility rates and rapid population growth, while the industrialized world was blamed for environmental degradation and exhaustion of nonrenewable resources due to overconsumption by households and industry. Despite the near total disagreement about what constituted the problem, a "World Population Plan of Action" was adopted almost unanimously, indicating agreement at least on the existence of a problem even if ther was no consensus on its content. The Plan affirmed that each nation has a sovereign right to formulate and implement its own population policies, that international cooperation is needed in population matters, and that population policies are components of social and economic development policies and not substitutes for them. Interest in African population dates back to the beginning of the colonial era, when the imperial powers wished to control population movements, estimate the taxable population, and control depopulation due to pathological infertility. Colonial population legislation was somewhat more liberal in English-speaking countries than in those under the sway of France because of the influence of Malthusianism in Great Britain and the movement for birth control that developed there. By the 1984 World Population Conference in Mexico, the governments of African countries had adopted the "Program of Action of Kilimanjaro Concerning the African Population and Autonomous Development," which encouraged development and implementation of integrated demographic policies to solve the problems of high mortality and fertility. The new support for control of population growth resulted in part from the increased influence of the newly independent countries within the UN, which reduced the influence in the General Assembly of the Catholic, non-Malthusian European countries. It was, however, primarily due to the apparent failure of economic development strategies in sub-Saharan Africa. The marginalization and economic stagnation of the African countries was probably the decisive element in convincing decision makers to regard rapid population growth as an obstacle to development. But examination of evidence from Mauritius, Kenya, and Ghana, 3 countries that were relatively early in support of family planning, suggests that proclamations of support do not necessarily translate to effective control of population growth.