Sub-Saharan Africa: An Extraordinary Period of Change

Africas hopes for a better future depend in wide-ranging part on improving the soundness of its people. sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing a period of extraordinary change. Across the continent, policy shed light ons atomic number 18 contributing to gamy-powered sparing issue. Greater policy-making openness has strengthened the loyalty of African governments to meeting the basic motifs of their people. Despite these positive trends, sub-Saharan Africa faces a development challenge greater than any new(prenominal) region. Much of the continents universe of discourse lives despe localizely poor.With record numbers of adolescents entering their child granting age, in less than three decades Africas universe of discourse is projected to double again from the incumbent level of 620 million. Meanwhile, many African nations ar struggling to provide health and education function to populations going at a small percent a year. In many countries, rapid population proce ss is contributing to debasement of the environment and undermining prospects for prosperity. Africas hopes for a better future depend in cock-a-hoop part on improving the health of its people.Better access to keen quality reproductive health services, particularly family planning, is key to improving health status especially for women. The reality of reproductive health in Africa, however, is furthest from ideal. Women begin child-bearing in their teens and devote an average of six children. Meanwhile, AIDS has struck hard in sub-Saharan Africa, where roughly 1 in 10 adults some(prenominal) men and women are infected with HIV. Yet traditional attitudes favoring large families are changing rapidly, owing to the growth of cities, the rising cost of active and subalterner child death place, among different factors.Demand for family planning has attach dramatically in near countries, and the decline in ca hire order ,limited as tardily as a decade ago to only a a cou ple of(prenominal)er countries in the region, appears to be spreading steadily across the continent. In oft cartridge holders of Africa, however, large families are still the norm. This situation is reinforced by low levels of education, particularly among women, and neighborly barriers to the full economic participation of women. Yet, school readjustment rates declined or came to a standstill during the economic crisis many African countries experienced in the 1980s.Compared to countries in other developing regions, African countries make only recently begun to adopt population policies and initiate family planning and connect reproductive health programs. However, African governments increasingly recognize the one-on-one and social benefits of smaller families. In the cultivation decade in that respect has been steady growth in the number of countries establishing national family planning programs and in the area of these efforts. Still, sub-Saharan Africa has a colossal way to go.In addition to meeting the increment need for family planning and reproductive health services, African countries must hyperbolise access to education for girls and economic opport building blockies for women. This will require significantly increase financial contributions from African governments and house-holds, as well as international donors. In sum, pass overing poor reproductive health and rapid population growth is a daunting task requiring comprehensive action on many assorted fronts. A priority area is population growth. This is a function of birth or fertility, mortality, and net migration.sub-Saharan Africa lags behind other regions in its demographic transition. The jibe fertility rate, the total number of children the average woman has in a lifetime. For sub-Saharan Africa as a whole has remained at most 6. 5 for the past 25 years, while it has declined to well-nigh 4 in all developing countries taken together. Recent surveys appear to signal, however, that several counties, are at or near a critical demographic tour point. sub-Saharan Africa continues to maintain the highest total fertility rates in the world.The total fertility rate is the average number of children a women will bear during her reproductive years, usually between 15 and 49 years old, although some analysts have turn outed this prescribe to include 10 and 55 year olds. Families in the region average an estimated 6. 4 children. Although there is considerable mutant by region, socioeconomic status, and place of residence ( folksy vs. urban). Disease vectors are non solely responsible for low fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa. Some countries have made significant inroads in their family planning efforts to strangle fertility.You can separate fertility rates into two types of determinants first world the direct that re ripes to the behavioral and biological aspects of fertility. And the second are indirect factors such as socioeconomic (ones income, ed ucation, cultural, historical, environmental, and politic-institutional factors Marriage patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa have a number of features that are unique and quite distinct from North the States and Europe. Most marriages, particularly in traditional societies, are universal and transcend at an early age.This may withal be view as a agent to the problem of rapid population growth. The belief systems, customs, traditions, and determine of Sub-Saharan Africans have significant impact on fertility levels. The African family structure is male dominated, and decisions well-nigh reproduction and family size are usually deferred to the husband. This may tend to make the women find it difficult to talk to their husbands about family planning. Since a high premium is placed on children, African women take aim to elevate their status, comparing with their husbands request to have oftentimes children.Mortality levels in Sub-Saharan Africa have declined substantially over the yea rs, thus converging towards levels associated with more real countries. Improvements in health, sanitation, and nutrition standards massive vaccination campaigns against measles, small pox, and other diseases and increased efforts on the part of World Health Organization and the planetary Red Cross have all contributed to this d holdward trend. Even with the heavy(a) of death rates, there are still slight regional variations in mortality levels that reflect environmental, economic, and sociocultural factors.Death rates may be prone to drought, areas with high incidence of AIDS and those areas that have experienced social unrest, civil war, and political upheaval also may have comparatively high mortality rates. Migration involves the movement from one administrative unit to a nonher, resulting in a change in permanent residence. Recent estimates show that Sub-Saharan Africa contains 35 million international migrants, almost fractional of the worlds total. some other mention l ike many other countries has been the brain drain of African intellectuals and students.Another concern regarding international migration is the refugee crisis, which has taken on added proportions recently. The most widely utilise definition is one which characterizes refugees as anyone who,owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality and is unable or unwilling to avail himherself of the protection of that country. Average per capita nutriment production has declined in many countries, per capita calorie consumption had stagnated at very(prenominal) low levels, and roughly 100 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa are nutriment insecure..The average African consumes only about 87 percent of the calories needed for a healthy and productive life. Womens room Time, and Their Role in country Production and Household Maintenance Systems Most women in Sub-Saharan Africa bear heavy responsibilities for food crop production, weeding and har vesting on mens fields, post-harvest processing, fuel wood and piss provision, and household maintenance. But the burdens on rural women are increasing, as population growth outpaces the evolution of countrified engine room and growing numbers of men leave the farms for urban and industrial jobs. many a(prenominal) factors underlie the persistence of very high human fertility rates. The essential problem is low gather up for fewer children. Environmental degradation, agricultural problems, food insecurity and poverty, and the heavy work burdens of woman all play a part in this respect. High infant and child mortality rates are a major factor explaining the persistent high guide for large number of children in Africa. Where girls are kept our of school to service with domestic tasks, this disconfirmingly affects their fertility preferences and their ability to make informed decisions about family planning once they reach childbearing age.The appropriate policy reception and action program to address these problems are not easily brought into compatible focus. Many of the most immediately attractive reme breachs have been tried and have failed. A key aspect will be to increase demand for fewer children. Educational efforts, directed at both(prenominal) men and women, are needed to raise awareness of the benefits of fewer children. Womens work loads need to be eased to scale down the need for child labour. Dynamic agricultural development and improved food security will also make out the demand for children.Promoting Environmentally Sustainable Agriculture Farm productivity per unit area must be raised significantly to generate more output with little increase in the area farmed. To minimize negative impacts on the environment, much more emphasis is required on environmentally benign and sustainable technologies. Numerous such agricultural techniques have been developed and successfully applied, often through adaptation of traditional practices that have evolved in response to local agro-ecological and socioeconomic condition.However, intensification with these technologies alone is unlikely to be sufficient in most Sub-Saharan African countries to achieve agricultural growth rates of 4 percent per year and more. Improved variety/impregnation/farm mechanization technologies will also be necessary. Increased use of fertilizers will be especially important to raise yields and maintain malicious gossip fertility. Intensive and imagination-conserving agriculture must be made less notional and more profitable. This requires appropriate marketing, price, tax and exchange rate policies as well as investments in rural understructure, health and education facilities.Creating parks, reserves and community-owned range inflict and protecting these against conversion into crop land will be important to conserve graphic resources and bio diversity. So will lessen infrastructure development in forests and other fragile areas to discour age settlement in these areas. Since this will limit the scope for further expansion of cropped land and, authorityly, the scope for agricultural production growth, there is a trade-off between saving and agricultural growth.Creating additional protection areas will only be executable and sustainable if agricultural production can be intensified at the rate suggested here (i. e. to about a 3. 5 percent one-year increase in farm out put per unit of land farmed). in this sense, conservation and agricultural intensification are complementary. As African farmers have shown, land scarcity leads to agricultural intensification &8212 if the necessary advice and inputs are available, intensification can be made sustainable and the rate of intensification greatly revivifyd.Infrastructure Development and block Policy The strong bias in urban infrastructure investments favoring the few major cities needs to be abandoned. Adequate transport lines to product markets are major factors assoc iated with the intensification of farming &8212 even where population densities are comparatively low. Rural roads and improved tracks navigable for animal-drawn vehicles are crucial. Major efforts are also needed to promote the use of locally suitable and appropriate liaise transport technology, especially animal-drawn implements, and of improved off-road transport.Infrastructure development also has a major impact on the productivity of rural labour and on key determinants of fertility. Roads provide access to health facilities and schools. Better improve and healthier farmers are more productive and more likely to be innovators. water supply and sanitation facilities have significant impact on health and labour productivity. Rural water supply, sanitation, health and education facilities and services are particularly important in terms of their impact on infant and child mortality and on female education &8212 both critical determinants of fertility preferences.With the major exceptions of the humid regions of Central and coastal air jacket Africa, almost all of Sub-Saharan Africa will be facing water shortages or water scarcity early in the next century. on that point is an urgent need for effective hydrological planning and for prudent demand management. Water must be recognized as the critical and limiting resource it is. it must be carefully allocated, and must be protected against pollution. formulation for water use must be based on earthy hydrological units such as river basins and integrated with planning for land use and other activities that affect, and are affected by, water development.Since water resources are frequently share among countries, it is important to cooperate closely in planning for long-term water sharing. Twenty-one of the worlds thirty poorest countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly half the regions people live in absolute poverty the equivalent of a dollar a day or less. Positive per capita growth in the past four years has not been enough to prevent an increase in the absolute number living in poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.By end of 1998, nearly 23 million adults and children were estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa accounting for 2/3 of the worlds infected persons. More than 1. 8 million Africans will die from AIDS this year. New infection rates are staggering in South Africa, 1,750 are infected by AIDS daily. Problems extend beyond the health sector. HIV/AIDS has raised the cost of doing business, killing professionals, schoolteachers and farmers, reducing incomes now and investments in the future. HIV/AIDS is overloading social welfare systems.Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 95% of the 13 million children worldwide who will be strip by AIDS by end of 2000. At current rates of population growth, sub-Saharan Africa will grow to over one one million million million people by 2020, despite declining birthrates and increasing number of deaths from AIDS. Contraceptive prevalence rates have been rising for the last three decades, yet remain under 10% in most of sub-Saharan Africa. The high rate of population growth intensifies existing social, political, economic, and environmental pressures.Aids assists African countries to reduce these pressures through family planning programs emphasizing healthier, smaller families, and through support of girls education, a major determinant of family size. As a result of the above nurture you can see that rapid population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa at the present time is a moment of opportunity on the African continent. Africa is making new headway democracy and economic reform are revitalizing the continent, and a number of countries are experiencing dynamic economic growth.With greater political open-ness, African governments are increasingly seeking to address the health and education needs of their people. Despite these positive trends, sub-Saharan Africa faces a development challenge greater than any other region. Africas progress has not reached enough people, and too much of the continent is still plagued by political instability. Many African nations are struggling to meet the health and education needs of populations expanding at about three percent a year. In too many countries, rapid population growth continues to threaten the natural resource base and future prospects for prosperity.The regions ability to slow current high rates of population growth is thus key to achieving its full potential drop for development. The international community has good reason to care about African development. The continent is endowed with ample mineral and agricultural resources, including the greatest potential in the world for increases in farm productivity. Africa is also one of the last untapped markets for goods and services industrialized countries thus stand to benefit by trading with a more prosperous Africa.Beyond economic self-interest, there are strong humanitarian reasons to support efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa, home to 11 percent of the worlds population. In many respects, Africa in the late 1990s resembles the East Asian economies as they began their economic take-off three decades ago. African governments need to emphasize three key strategies in their efforts to improve individual well-being and slow population growth. The first priority should be to expand reproductive health and family planning services to meet existing unmet needs.The second, to expand educational and economic opportunities, especially for women, both to improve the lives of individuals and to aid bring forward a desire for smaller families. The third, to slow the momentum of future population growth through education and reproductive health programs that help issue people choose to delay childbearing. Carrying out the comprehensive agenda depict above will require enormous effort by African governments. The task is large, yet attainable if these governments increas e their current low levels of commitment to reproductive health and family planning programs.Governments and donors should be prepared to invest years of sustained effort to build successful population programs. Over the long haul, there are bound to be setbacks and difficulties. Currently, there is no reason to expect that either the fertility or development transitions will move on more quickly and with less external aid in sub-Saharan Africa than they did in other places. Yet the needs are pressing, and Africa must accelerate the development of population programs and the current trend towards smaller families.This may be possible if African countries are willing to learn as much as possible from the experiences of other regions, while at the same time recognizing the continents own special challenges, such as the HIV/AIDS crisis. Africas relatively recent establishment of population policies and programs has given it the chance to learn from both the mistakes and achievements of other regions which have grappled with the problem of rapid population growth. African countries, with help from the world community, have the potential to build on these experiences and create their own success story.