A report on global tobacco consumption says while the number of smokers has declined worldwide, they are on the rise in Africa.

The Tobacco Atlas report, compiled by a consortium of public health organisations and US academics, found that global smoking rates declined from 22.6% in 2007 to 19.6% in 2019.

But the report's authors from Vital Strategies and Tobacconomics at the University of Illinois said that parts of the world experiencing a growth in population growth had increasing numbers of smokers, including in Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and the western Pacific.

In at least 10 African countries the prevalence was rising among adults as well as among young people.

“The industry is still preying on emerging economies in ways that will lock in harms for a generation or more," the Reuters news agency quotes report author Jeffrey Drope as saying.