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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Libya
Index
As of 1987, the most recent census was that taken in July 1984,
but the only available data showed a provisional population figure
of 3.637 million inhabitants--one of the smallest totals on the
African continent. Of these, an estimated 1.950 million were men,
and 1.687 million women. Having slightly more men than women in the
population was characteristic of developing countries such as Libya
where health practices and sanitation were fast improving but where
female mortality relating to childbirth and favoritism toward male
over female children caused a slight skewing of the population
profile. In addition, underreporting of females is fairly common in
many Muslim societies.
The 1984 population total was an increase from the 2.29 million
reported in 1973 and 1.54 million in 1964. Included in the census
were at least 260,000 expatriate workers, but the total number of
foreigners in Libya in 1984 was unavailable. This uncertainty was
in keeping with a general lack of reliable, current, social
statistics for Libya in the 1980s, in marked contrast with the
situation a decade earlier.
The population was exceptionally young and was growing at a
rapid pace. Estimates placed those under the age of fifteen at up
to half the total population. Based on results of the 1984 census,
the United Nations (UN) placed the annual rate of increase for the
1980-84 period at an extremely high 4.5 percent, but the Central
Bank of Libya placed the figure at 3.9 percent annually for
nationals only. Official sources put the average annual growth rate
for the 1970-86 period at 4 percent, a figure that agreed with
World Bank (see Glossary)
data; the bank projected that this rate
would prevail until the year 2000, when Libya's population would
total 6 million.
This high rate of population increase reflected an official
policy of fostering rapid growth to meet labor needs and to fuel
economic development. It was also well above comparable rates in
other Maghribi states, which had instituted family planning
programs to contain their burgeoning numbers. Libya had no such
national program. On the contrary, the government offered
incentives to encourage births and had improved health facilities
to ensure infant survivability. Libyan population policy thus
emphasized growth over restraint, large families over small ones,
and an ever-expanding population--luxuries Libya felt it could
afford, given the vastness of its wealth in petroleum and area.
According to UN estimates for the years 1980-85, life
expectancy was fifty-six years for men and fifty-nine years for
women, a gain of more than ten years for each sex since 1960. The
crude birth rate was 46 per 1,000, down 7 percent since 1965, while
the crude death rate was 11 per 1,000, a decline of 40 percent over
20 years. The infant mortality rate had similarly declined from 140
deaths per 1,000 in 1965 to 92 in 1985, still high by Western
standards but not by those of North Africa.
The population was by no means distributed evenly across the
country. About 65 percent resided in Tripolitania, 30 percent in
Cyrenaica, and 5 percent in Fezzan, a breakdown that had not
changed appreciably for at least 30 years. Within the two northern
geographic regions, the population was overwhelmingly concentrated
along the Mediterranean littoral. Along the coast, the density was
estimated at more than fifty inhabitants per square kilometer,
whereas it fell to less than one per square kilometer in the
interior. The average for the country as a whole was usually placed
at two.
In the 1980s, Libya was still predominantly a rural country,
even though a large percentage of its people were concentrated in
the cities and nearby intensively cultivated agricultural zones of
the coastal plains. Under the impact of heavy and sustained
country-to-town migration, the urban sector continued to grow
rapidly, averaging 8 percent annually in the early 1980s. Reliable
assessments held the country to be about 40 percent urban as
compared with a 1964 figure of 27 percent. Some sources, such as
the World Bank, placed the rate of urbanization at more than 60
percent, but this figure was probably based on 1973 census data
that reflected a radical change in the definition of urban
population rather than an unprecedented surge of rural inhabitants
into cities and towns. In spite of sizable internal migration into
urban centers, particularly Benghazi and Tripoli, Libya remained
less urbanized than almost any other Arab country. The government
was concerned about this continual drain from the countryside.
Since the late 1970s, it had sponsored a number of farming schemes
in the desert, designed in part to encourage rural families to
remain on the land rather than to migrate to more densely populated
areas.
In the early 1980s, the urban concentrations of Tripoli and
Benghazi dominated the country. These two cities and the
neighboring coastal regions contained more than 90 percent of
Libya's population and nearly all of its urban centers, but they
occupied less than 10 percent of the land area. Several factors
accounted for their dominance, such as higher rates of fertility,
declining death rates because of improved health and sanitation
measures, and long-term internal migration.
As the capital of the country, Tripoli was the larger and more
important of the two cities. Greater Tripoli was composed of six
municipalities that stretched nearly 100 kilometers along the coast
and about 50 inland. At the heart of this urban complex was the
city of Tripoli, the 1984 population of which was 990,000 and which
contained several distinct zones. The
medina (see Glossary) was the
oldest quarter, many of its buildings dating to the Ottoman era
(see Ottoman Regency
, ch. 1). Here a traditionally structured
Islamic society composed of artisans, religious scholars and
leaders, shopkeepers, and merchants had survived into the mid-
twentieth century. The manufacture of traditional handicrafts, such
as carpets, leather goods, copper ware, and pottery, was centered
in the medina.
The Italian city, constructed between 1911 and 1951 beyond the
medina, was designed for commercial and administrative purposes. It
featured wide avenues, piazzas, multistoried buildings, parks, and
residential areas where Italian colonials once lived. The Libyan-
built modern sector reflected the needs of government, the impact
of large-scale internal migration, new industrialization, and oil
income. Independence brought rapid rural-to-urban migration as a
result of employment opportunities in construction, transportation,
and municipal services, especially after the discovery of oil. This
period also brought new government facilities, apartment buildings,
and the first public housing projects as well as such industries as
food-processing, textiles, and oil refining.
Metropolitan Tripoli sprawled in an arc around the harbor and
medina. In addition to its political, commercial, and residential
structures
and functions, the city was a seat of learning and scholarship
centered in religious seminaries, technical colleges, and a
university
(see Education
, this ch.). Planners hoped to channel
future growth east and west along the coast and to promote
expansion of surrounding towns in an effort to reduce urban density
and to preserve contiguous agricultural zones. They also envisaged
revitalization of the medina as they strove to preserve the city's
architectural and cultural heritage in the midst of twentieth-
century urbanization.
As a consequence of its small population and work force, Libya
has had to import a large number of foreign workers. Expatriate
workers, most of them from nearby Arab countries, flowed into Libya
after the discovery of oil. There were about 17,000 of them in
1964, but the total had risen to 64,000 by 1971 and to 223,000 in
1975, when foreign workers made up almost 33 percent of the labor
force. The official number of foreign workers in Libya in 1980 was
280,000, but private researchers argued persuasively that the true
number was more than 500,000 because of underreporting and illegal
entry.
The most acute demand was for managerial and professional
personnel. A large percentage of the expatriates were unskilled
laborers, who were widely distributed throughout the economy. On
paper, there was ample legislation to ensure that foreigners were
given employment only where qualified Libyans could not be found.
But the demand for labor of all kinds was such that the
availability of aliens made it possible for Libyans to select the
choice positions for themselves and leave the less desirable ones
to foreigners.
In 1980 nonnationals were found mainly in construction work,
where they numbered almost 130,000 or 46 percent of those employed
in that industry, according to official statistics. Their numbers
in such work were expected to decline after the mid-1980s, at the
same time that ever-larger numbers of foreigners were expected to
fill jobs in manufacturing, where they constituted more than 8
percent of the 1980 labor force. Significant numbers of expatriates
were found in agriculture (8 percent) and education (l0 percent) as
well. Few were employed in the petroleum sector, however, only
3,000 or 1 percent of all foreign workers in 1980.
In 1983 there were more than 560,000 foreigners resident in
Libya, about 18 percent of the total population, according to the
Secretariat of Planning. By far the most numerous were Egyptians
(l74,000) and Tunisians (73,600); the largest Western groups were
Italians (l4,900) and British (10,700). During 1984, however, a
large portion of the foreign work force departed as a result of
restrictions on repatriation of earnings. In 1985, for reasons that
appeared more political than economic, Libya expelled tens of
thousands of workers, including 20,000 Egyptians, 32,000 Tunisians,
and several thousand from Mali and Niger. This exodus continued the
following year when some 25,000 Moroccans were forced to depart.
The number of resident foreigners thus declined drastically in
the mid-l980s. The exact dimensions of the decline as well as its
impact upon the country, however, remained unclear. Minimum
estimates of the number of nonnationals still in Libya in l987
ranged upward of 200,000, a reasonable figure given Libya's
dependence upon imported labor for essential skills and services.
Data as of 1987
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