CASE STUDY | WORKSHOP PROJECT
Africa's Humanitarian crises
A cartogram mapping population size, fertility rates, and humanitarian need across Africa, built for infogr8's FutureFriday workshop.
CLIENT
Workshop Project
SCOPE
Data, Design, Dev
YEAR
2025
TOOLS
Illustrator, Datawrapper
01
THE PROJECT
According to the United Nations, around 150 million people in Africa will need humanitarian assistance in 2024. Many of the problems driving that number are underreported — and strongly tied to overpopulation and fast-growing population sizes, compounding existing conflict, famine, and other vulnerabilities. This cartogram, made as part of infogr8's FutureFriday workshop, explores that connection.
02
DATA AND ANALYSIS
The brief, set by infogr8, provided United Nations population data and asked participants to find a story inside it. Africa's fertility rates stood out immediately — rising sharply while falling almost everywhere else in the world — and cross-referencing that against conflict zones revealed a strong correlation between population growth and humanitarian crisis areas.
03
DESIGN SYSTEM
Built as a cartogram in Datawrapper, with each country's rectangle sized by population — the larger the rectangle, the larger the population. A second data layer uses colour, from dark to light, to show fertility rate. A third layer marks specific humanitarian crises — extreme weather, disease, armed conflict — layered on top, so three levels of information sit in one map without competing for attention.
04
RESULTS
The result is a single map that connects population growth, fertility rates, and humanitarian crisis in one glance — making an underreported story legible at a glance. Made as part of infogr8's FutureFriday workshop; see more on infogr8's website.
