Some Good News from Africa

By Michele Learner and Charles Uphaus

December 2006

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Nakalanda Julie Matovu manages a farm project in Rakai, in southwestern Uganda. Julie works largely with "child-headed households" – families who have lost parents to HIV/AIDS and are led by children, some as young as 11. In a region where 97 percent of the people farm, she helps the orphans develop stable sources of food and improve their agricultural skills. The program distributes seeds for planting along with staple foods like flour and beans. Another component is "Give Me a Goat/Give Me a Chance," which provides child-led families with a female goat so that they have access to milk and the opportunity to raise enough young goats to bring in a steady income. At least one female offspring is then passed on to another household.

For more than 30 years, Bread for the World members have been working to end hunger in Africa. So most of us are quite familiar with the bad news: hunger and poverty are widespread and growing, HIV/AIDS is robbing the continent of its parents and workers, many countries face devastation in the wake of armed conflict, and the list goes on.  

Yet the hard work of people all over Africa has created improvements. The Rakai project shows how people can respond to even the most difficult situations: by focusing on the most vulnerable and designing programs that can become self-sustaining. The truth is that many countries are making progress – on government accountability, hunger prevalence, economic growth, conflict and other key issues.

Bread for the World advocates, too, can be proud of the victories we are winning for people in Africa. Our Offering of Letters campaigns for substantial increases in U.S. poverty-focused development assistance, a poverty reduction focus for the Millennium Challenge Account, and debt relief have bolstered the efforts of African families to build a better life.

One Continent, Dozens of Countries

U.S. news reports often seem to regard Africa as one big country. Along with the news from France, Brazil or India, we hear about AIDS in Africa, poverty in Africa and African famine. In fact, it can be hard to get news of individual African nations.

But there are 53 countries in Africa. It is a continent with diverse histories, cultures, languages, climates, economies and political environments. Although several countries are suffering war, natural disasters or repressive governments, many others are not.

In the past few years, democratic elections have led to a transfer of power in a number of nations, from Senegal and Ghana to Tanzania and Zambia. In July 2006, the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo held the first free elections in its history. Fair elections have also been held in Liberia and Burundi, both emerging from years of civil war.

Democratic elections are more likely to install leaders who are accountable to their people. Tanzania's new president, Jakaya Kikwete, was elected last year by a wide margin and has made commitments to reduce poverty and develop the country's crucial agriculture sector. Despite all Tanzania's challenges as an extremely poor nation, the economy grew by 5.8 percent this year and is expected to surpass that rate next year, making poverty reduction and agricultural development easier.

Tanzania is not the only country making encouraging economic progress, nor is this news all recent: 16 African countries, home to 30 percent of Africa's population, have maintained annual economic growth rates of more than 4.5 percent for the past 10 years.

Perhaps nowhere is progress more apparent than in southern Africa. In the early 1980s, few observers could have predicted that 2006 would see democratic institutions taking hold in many countries and no wars in the region. Yet in the past two decades, South Africa made a peaceful transition from apartheid, Namibia emerged as a fully independent nation, Zambia and Malawi held elections which ended long-time one-party rule, and Mozambique and Angola resolved their protracted civil wars. As award-winning journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault points out, South Africa's process of reconciliation between former enemies has become a model for conflict resolution around the world.

African states are also working together on common problems. The African Union (AU) replaced the Organization of African Unity in 2002 and soon founded the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), whose goal is to eliminate poverty. With democracy taking hold on the continent, the AU established the African Peer Review Mechanism, whose participating countries can bolster their reputations by undergoing an outside review of their political governance. So far 26 countries have signed up, and Ghana and Rwanda have had reviews. The AU is also working to strengthen its Electoral Assistance Unit.

A year ago, UN General Assembly President Jan Eliasson reported that the number of African countries in a state of armed conflict had fallen to three, down from 14 in 1998. But obviously there are places where people continue to suffer violence and the death, hunger and disease that go with it. One of these is the Darfur region of Sudan, where the situation often seems to worsen with each passing day. The African Union has sent 7,000 troops to try to stop the genocide. Analysts say that while the mission has had its problems, it’s an important step forward that an organization representing 53 sovereign states could agree on the deployment of an intervention force in a member nation.

Progress Against Hunger, Poverty and Disease

Hunger is fueled by conflicts like that in Sudan. Over the past decade, five war-torn countries accounted for much of the increase in the number of hungry people in Africa -- Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In the populous DRC, the undernourishment rate spiked to 72 percent – 36 million people – largely because of civil war.

In contrast, 29 countries have reduced their rate of hunger over the past 10 years. In some, a lower percentage rate of hunger nevertheless coincided with a rise in the number of hungry people because of population growth. But other countries succeeded in reducing both the rate and the number of hungry people. Ghana has already reached the U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of reducing by half its number of undernourished people. Other countries, from Angola, Malawi and Mozambique to Ethiopia and Guinea, also have fewer hungry people. Much of their success is credited to improvements in agriculture, where most of Africa’s hungry people work.

There has been progress against poverty as well. Senegal, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Uganda, Ghana and Cape Verde have all lifted significant percentages of their citizens above the poverty line. Several African countries are on track to meet another key MDG target -- cutting in half the number of people living on less than $1 per day.

There is even a glimmer of hope in the devastating HIV/AIDS pandemic, as health professionals prove that treatment can reduce AIDS-related deaths in poor countries just as in wealthy ones. In 2005 alone, the number of Africans receiving anti-retroviral therapy more than doubled. Some countries, like Botswana and Uganda, are now able to treat more than half of their patients who need the medications. South Africa made headlines in fall 2006 by belatedly acknowledging that HIV is the cause of AIDS and pledging that anti-retroviral therapy will be the centerpiece of the government’s response to AIDS. South Africa has the world’s largest number of people with HIV and has lost several years in responding to the pandemic. But, as local AIDS experts point out, it’s not too late, both to offer treatment and to prevent HIV in the next generation.

Advocacy: Providing Essential Support

For several years, increasing U.S. poverty-focused development assistance has been a high priority for Bread for the World, and Congress has in fact approved significant increases. In 1999, funding was $4 billion. By 2006, it was $10.6 billion, and Congress is still debating an additional increase for 2007. Poverty-focused development assistance helps people in poor countries get access to the basics they need to build a better life, like sufficient food, clean water, health care and primary education.

During our 2003 Offering of Letters, Rise to the Challenge: End World Hunger, Bread for the World members worked to establish and fund the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) and to keep the initiative focused on reducing poverty. Now 11 sub-Saharan African countries have met MCA indicators for investing in their people, governing justly and promoting economic freedom. Benin, Cape Verde, Ghana, Madagascar and Mali have already signed compacts for programs designed to reduce poverty and promote economic growth. Burkina Faso, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal and Tanzania are developing compacts. Six other countries come close to meeting the criteria and are enrolled in the MCA Threshold Program. Although the MCA has not operated long enough to show improvements on hunger and poverty, there has already been an “MCA effect,” meaning that competition for the new funding has led countries to step up their reforms.

Millions of people around the world have also benefited from debt relief, the main focus of our 1999 Offering of Letters and a key element of the ONE Campaign, of which Bread for the World is a founding member. The 29 countries worldwide which have benefited from the Highly-Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief initiative are now spending an average of five times the amount of their debt-service payments on health, education and other social services. Prior to debt relief, the average country spent more on debt service than on education and health combined. And their investments are paying off. For example, more than 3 million Tanzanian children returned to school or enrolled for the first time; the nation expects to attain universal basic education within the next year. In Burkina Faso, more than one million people now have access to safe drinking water.

People in Africa continue to work very hard to help their families and neighbors build better lives, and some of their work is paying off. Bread for the World will continue to advocate for the U.S. policies and resources that hungry people in Africa need to make sustainable, long-term gains. Our work is paying off, too.