The Northern Regional Director of the National Population Council, Mr. Alhassan Issahaku Amadu, has expressed concern about the high rate of polygamous and serial marriages in the area. Mr. Amadu said due to economic difficulties, some men who contracted polygamy opt out of it and engaged in serial marriages, creating problems, including child abandonment. He made the observation in Tamale on Friday, at a youth forum organized by Curious Minds, a non-governmental group, to discuss population and development and its impact on the youth in the Region. It was under the theme: “The world at 7 billion, population growth and development implications in the Northern Region”. Mr. Amadu said the current population of the Region stood at 2,468,557 at 35.6 per cent rate, making it the fourth most populated region in the country. He called on the people to use contraceptives or practice other family planning methods, to control the population growth. Mr Amadu said the Region was the least in the use of contraceptives due to religious and cultural beliefs, which largely explained the high population growth. The Northern Regional Minister, Mr. Moses Bukari Mabengba, in a speech read on his behalf, said population growth placed a huge responsibility on government to provide development and infrastructure to correspond with the rate of growth, saying, population potentials could best be harnessed for sustainable development. He said the world’s population was set to hit seven billion on 31st October this year, and called for the creation of more opportunities for young people to enable them to confront the challenges of poverty, illiteracy and violence. Mr. Thomas Azure, Northern Regional Statistician, said the industrial revolution in Europe was accompanied universally with population growth, bringing about the clearing of uncultivated land, the draining of swamps and general agricultural revolution. He said the 2010 population census of Ghana puts the provisional figure at 24,223,431 with that of the Region been 2,468,577. Mr Azure said that the relation between population growth and economic development was complex. He called for more investment in the human resource development of the nation to ensure the proper development of individuals.