Introduction. The fear of big numbers: the politics and politicisation of African demographic change

Since the beginning of the 2000s, scientific research and studies by international organi-sations have converged in identifying new major trends in African demography for the de-cades to come, contributing to reshape the public representations of Africa from a low pop-ulation continent to one of rampant growth. At the same time, the public discourse emerged in the West regarding these changes occurred under the sign of a dramatised politicisation rather than a scientifically based debate. Under the pressure of the recent “migration crisis” in Europe, this politicised Euro-African demography has set itself at the centre of public and media debates in many European nations, based on alarming demographic predictions that oppose a succumbing “old Europe” to an emerging “young Africa”. Against this back-ground, the goal of this introduction is twofold: outlining a history of concepts and ideas pertaining to African demography in its political dimension; identifying spaces for dialogue and cooperation between different disciplines and reconsider epistemological and method-ological conventions with the goal of responding to the challenges of the politicization of African demographic dynamics.