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My dad was born and raised in Zambia, and his dad was born and raised in S. Africa before him, and I've only ever been in those two countries in Africa, so I can only talk about them as opposed to the rest of the continent.
The problem is not so much a lag between death and birth rates (although that certainly is a factor) so much as the growth in population has not led to a corresponding diversification of the economy. 19th Century England, for example, experienced a tremendous population explosion, but also witnessed the birth and growth of a whole range of new industries. In Zambia, the population exploded after Independence (1965), and, briefly, so, too, did the copper industry (and related industries), but once copper went to shit everyone just went back home and tried to farm. You can guess what happened.
The more important question is why didn't the economy develop? I'll admit for a while I succumbed to the temptation to believe that the West was responsible. After all, you drive through these places and the people seem so earnest that they can't possibly be at fault. No, the Western bankers who keep these countries in debt are to blame. And, to a point, that's true. If the nations were all relieved of their debt development would be easier, but it still wouldn't necessarily happen.
The problem, as a wonderfully Irish old nun working in an AIDS hospice in Zambia told me, is that Zambians (and, I imagine, many many Africans) are still stuck in the "Big Man" mentality. In the village, it was the chief, and he settled the disputes and things stayed more or less static. In the 20th century, it was the British, and they put the Zambians to work extracting natural resources. Now, the Big Man is the local despot, "president" or whoever greases enough palms to rule the country. The second example was unsustainable because people don't like being ruled by foreigners. The third example is unsustainable because, like in the village, nothing is growing except for the population. And that spells disaster.
Of course no one questions the "Big Man" because the tradition of the past thousand years has been to accept what the big man says. Call it a cultural phenomenon, mass delusion, or just stupidity, but until Africans learn to change their own mindset, they are completely f*cked.
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You're "joking/kidding" right?
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