Most national governments make population projections for their own countries. In addition, a number of international organisations such as the United Nations, World Bank, Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and the United States Census Bureau prepare population projections for the world, regions and individual countries. The main objective of this paper is to critically evaluate the most recent projections prepared by the National Statistical Office (NSO) and provide alternative projections.
The Epidemic Projection Package (EPP) developed by the UNAIDS reference group on Estimates, Models and Projections and the SPECTRUM program developed by the Futures Group were used to model the Malawian HIV epidemic, project future trends in HIV/AIDS and population and estimate the demographic impact of AIDS, The national HIV prevalence surveys among pregnant women from 1985 to 2000 served as the data sets used io calibrate the input HIV prevalence values for the model whereas demographic data obtained from the 1998 Malawi Population and Housing Census acted as a base for population projections.
The results indicate that the population of Malawi will continue to grow despite the negative impact of HIV/AIDS epidemic. The population of Malawi is expected to increase from 9.92 million in 1998 to 13.52 in 2010 and io 16.84 million in 2020.
It was concluded that the population projections presented in this study are not about predicting the future so much as these are about exploring the consequences of today 's trends. These are intended to show what the future will look like if today's trends continue for the next decade or two. As in the case of Malawi, predicted future is sufficiently undesirable that it should serve to focus our attention on implementing programmes today that will protect people from HIV infection and promise a brighter future. It was recommended that there is need to strengthen the research capacity of staff of the Demographic Unit, Population and Human Resource Development Unit (PHRDU) and National Statistical Office (NSO) to able to cany out not only detailed analysis of available demographic data using both direct and indirect methods but also prepare robust population projections for social and economic planning. Frequent movement of staff from one section to another should be minimized.