Back to Africa

Day before yesterday I reflected on having revisited the Live8 concerts held in 2005. That led to a little more research into the state of human affairs on the African continent. It’s a sobering reality. Think about the following, while remembering that there are millions of men, women and children involved in these black and white “facts”:

§ 50% of the people in Africa are under 16 years of age
§ One of every six African children dies before age five
§ Child mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa is 25 times greater than in the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development
§ The average life expectancy in Africa is 41
§ 70% of the worldwide HIV-positive cases are in Africa
§ Per capita income is less than $1,500 a year
§ 350 million Africans, half of the Sub-Saharan population, survive on less than $1 a day
§ 185 million Africans, 33% of the population, are malnourished
§ More than 300 million lack safe drinking water
§ Less than 50% have access to doctors and hospitals
§ Only 57% of primary school age children are in school
§ Less than 20% of the population has electricity; less than 15% has a telephone; less than 8% has Internet access

While Americans are spending $42 billion a year on diet and health books, the United States spends $19 billion a year to fight poverty and disease – only $4 billion a year of which goes to Africa. The U.S. should be the leader, or at least among the leaders, in terms of the percentage of its wealth that it redirects to fight poverty and human suffering of this kind. We are not among the leaders. The U.S. has spent almost $500 billion in four years in Iraq. After moving past the WMD reason for invading, we finally settled on a mission that was focused on relieving the Iraqi people from the suffering inflicted by a brutal dictator. Extreme poverty is a far more brutal and deadly dictator. It kills and inflicts untold suffering on millions of people every, single day – day after day after day. An invasion against this enemy is in order.

In 2000, a United Nations General Assembly summit established the Millennium Development Goals for Africa and other poor countries. The primary goal is to cut poverty, hunger and illness by 50% in 175 of the poorest countries by 2015. The summit recognized that the responsibility for achieving this goal is shared by developing and developed countries but placed the primary responsibility on the developing countries.

In July 2003, admittedly only three years into the 15-year effort, the UN Development Program issued a report regarding the 175 countries targeted in the Millennium Development Goals. This report brings the sobering reality reflected in the above facts into even starker focus. It says:

§ Progress in 31 of the 175 countries has stalled or reversed
§ Based on current economic trends, 20 of these countries will not halve poverty until 2147 and will not overcome poverty before 2165, the same time that they’re projected to cut childhood mortality rates by two-thirds
§ 54 of these nations are poorer than they were in 1990, 20 of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa and 17 of which are in East Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States
§ 21 of these countries have greater hunger than in 1990
§ 14 of the countries have an increased rate of children dying before age five
§ In 12 of these countries, primary school enrollment has declined

The conditions noted above are so remote from ours that it’s hard to take them in and accept the fact that they represent the daily reality for not millions but billions of fellow human beings. There is no silver bullet for poverty and money won’t solve all the problems. As I’ve mentioned previously, the fair and effective redistribution of wealth is a huge challenge and one of the greatest challenges comes from rampant corruption in the governments of the underdeveloped and developing countries; there are times when they are their worst enemy. Dictators in Africa have inflicted more suffering or more people than a Saddam Hussein could even think about.

But the challenges can’t become an excuse for inaction by developed countries or by the citizens of developed countries. We must raise our level of awareness and become involved. We can redirect a portion of our own spending to provide what assistance we’re capable of providing. We can teach our children and we can educate our friends and we can make sure our elected officials know that we care as much about fighting extreme poverty as we do about fighting terrorism.

For starters, here are a couple of links that offer some insight into the struggle that is barely outlined above:

www.care.org
www.globalfundforchildren.org
www.doctorswithoutborders.org
www.heifer.org
www.unicefusa.org
www.oecd.org

We can do more.