This paper is the executive summary of a collective publication: Africa and its Demographic Challenges: an Uncertain Future, edited by Benoît Ferry. This study was born out of a workshop on demography and population issues organized in early March 2006 by AFD in partnership with the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), the Flora Hewlett Foundation and the French Équilibres & Populations association. This workshop’s initiators had a threefold objective: (i) to resituate the demography issue, particularly in SubSaharan Africa, at the center of the debate on the structural factors of growth and development ; (ii) to highlight the failure of the contraceptive revolution of the last thirty years on the African continent and to contrast the various viewpoints on the issue ; (iii) to reignite renewed dialogue between the research world and development actors on the complex relationships between demographic, economic and political problems.