Global Policy Forum

By Rwembeho Stephen

It seems everyone is at least talking about the poverty that afflicts much of the majority in the world these days. Concerts have raised awareness among the young people, grants have been offered by the wealthy, and debts have been relived by the most powerful, yet the problem of poverty and its associated ills-illiteracy, poor health, oppression, to name a few, still afflict the world. Poverty is destroying individuals and entire societies. There is no international issue that is more pressing or damaging.

Poverty is the oldest and the most devastating disease in the third world. Its rate of killing cannot be compared to any disease, right from the genesis of mankind. It is worse than malaria and HIV/AIDS, which are claimed to be the highest killer diseases.

HIV/AIDS only attack a few people in a society, which is a negligible portion of the world's population. But poverty, is a pandemic that affects a greater number of people in the society and the whole society at large. "Out of the world's population of more than 6 billion people, nearly 1.3 billion live on less than a dollar a day, and close to 1 billion cannot meet their basic consumption requirement... (World Bank report 2001)

A failure to solve the seemingly intractable problem of global poverty in the world offers a grim present and even a worse future, with targets to solve the problems of child mortality not being reached; and if we do not work faster, better, and harder, with more money and greater impact - we will miss most of our targets, on child mortality, primary education and maternal health. This poor rate of progress is unacceptable. It should shame the world. And we have to do something about it.

On current forecasts in Sub Saharan Africa, we will not achieve our target for reducing child mortality until 2165. Why? It is not that the knowledge to avoid these infant deaths does not exist; it is not that the drugs do not exist; it is not that the expertise does not exist. What is missing is political will and the capacity to make it happen!

According to a recent UNICEF report,1.2 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to clean water, 113 million children have no classrooms, no desks, no textbooks, and no teachers. Millions of children die each year from diseases we know we can prevent. HIV and AIDS is, in some countries, wiping out all the gains in life expectancy of the last 40 years

The part of the world that is mostly clearly affected by poverty is Africa. In fact, as the rest of the developing world has seen a steady decline in rates of poverty, the situation in sub-Saharan African is only getting worse. As the Global Policy Forum notes, The World Bank recently reported that Sub-Saharan African countries have the largest share of people living below one dollar a day. The tragedy is that while other countries in Asia and Latin America are slowly but surely pulling themselves out of the poverty club, African countries, are regressing into lower levels of deprivation, with the result that the number of poor people in this region is expected to rise from 315 million in 1999 to about 404 million in 2015.

While the rest of the world seemingly slowly pulling itself out of debt and poverty, the situation in Africa remains grim. One of the most important issues related to poverty in Africa is the AIDS epidemic. Currently, 25.4 million people are living with HIV in Africa with over 3 million new infections occurring each year (Avert.org). HIV/AIDS and poverty are linked in a way that makes determining causality difficult.

There are other health concerns in addition to AIDS. Measles alone kills over 500,000 African children each year (Red Cross), and 11,000,000 children die before their fifth birthday each year as a result of mostly preventable diseases, including malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia. These deaths can be prevented. We know how to prevent these deaths--we have the biological knowledge and tools to stop this public health travesty--but we are not doing it. Yet.

And the current public health system is simply not up to the challenge, with poverty a major obstacle, as Sustainable Development International points out: The record of African countries in dealing with disease is not encouraging. There are major structural and geographical problems to be overcome. Millions of people in Africa simply do not have access to trained medical personnel, and even if they do, essential medical equipment and drugs are either not available or supplies are not sustainable. In addition, there are inadequate data on the incidence and prevalence of illness, which adds to the problem of providing a reliable healthcare service.

Until the creation of affluence becomes the major political driver, more money will be spent on arms than on health. Access to education is another critical issue facing the people of Africa. Illiteracy and low levels of schooling make any reform or economic program challenging. USAID identifies the challenges facing education in Africa:

African primary school enrollment and literacy rates are among the lowest in the world; 42 million school children in sub-Saharan Africa are not enrolled in school. Of those that do have access to school, the schooling they receive is often of such poor quality that they are not able to acquire even the most basic skills of reading and writing;

In 1999, more than 860,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa lost teachers to AIDS. And education as a matter of fact is a tool for eliminating poverty, decreasing disease, and creating a sustainable future. UNESCO describes its impact: Development experts underscore the fact that universal education for children-particularly for girls, who account for more than half of the world's children not in school is the foundation for lasting social change. Education broadens employment options, increases income levels, improves health and well being, helps prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, and stabilizes interpersonal ties.

No less tangible are the rippling effects education can have on a community or an entire nation. Compounding all of the problems in Africa is the rate of population increase, which swallows up much of the aid and debt relief provided by Western donor States.

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