This article shows that beneath the declining trend reflected in national fertility data lies a potential for the rate of decline to slow down as a result of a relatively high level of fertility among African women who have never been married and those under the age of 30. Women in these two situations attract policy attention because of their critical roles in the rate at which fertility declines. National population policy that deals with such women must go beyond the traditional population activities to include programmes concerned with the socio?economic background of the emergent patterns of reproductive behaviour.