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2.3 Social Development I: Economic Report on Africa 2007

Guest post by: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

Article Overview: While growth has recovered on the continent, the gains in terms of social development and poverty reduction are still limited. This sub-section reviews the evidence on social development through the lenses of the MDGs. Following a discussion of progress and challenges for the various goals, the sub-section provides a more detailed discussion of the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS. More details on progress towards the MDGs in Africa is provided in various ECA documents, including a forthcoming report (UNECA 2007), as well as reports by other United Nations publications (e.g. UNDP and UNICEF 2002).

2.3 Social Development I: Economic Report on Africa 2007

While growth has recovered on the continent, the gains in terms of social development
and poverty reduction are still limited. This sub-section reviews the evidence
on social development through the lenses of the MDGs. Following a discussion
of progress and challenges for the various goals, the sub-section provides a more
detailed discussion of the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS. More details on progress
towards the MDGs in Africa is provided in various ECA documents, including a
forthcoming report (UNECA 2007), as well as reports by other United Nations
publications (e.g. UNDP and UNICEF 2002).

Overall assessment of the MDGs

As can be seen in table 2.8, progress towards the MDGs is slow; thus, serious challenges
remain in all major areas of social development. Nevertheless, on a disaggregated
level, some countries have made significant progress.

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty

The share of the population living on less than one dollar (PPP) per day remains
virtually unchanged over the 12-year period, 1990-2002 (table 2.8). The lack of
progress in poverty reduction can be attributed to two factors. First, poverty rates
tend to follow growth with a lag. Secondly, recent economic growth has not been
accompanied by meaningful job creation (UNECA 2006b). This is because in many
countries, growth rates have not been high enough to generate sufficient demand for
labour. Moreover, growth remains highly volatile, which hampers job creation in the
private sector.

Furthermore, the shift of economic activity away from agriculture into capital-intensive
sectors such as mining and oil, has also undermined job creation. The fact that
employment creation is not integrated into macroeconomic policy frameworks as
an explicit goal of macroeconomic policy is an additional reason for the weak gains
from recent growth recovery in terms of job creation (Pollin et al. 2006). Therefore,
African countries need to adopt more flexible pro-growth macroeconomic frameworks
and better targeted sectoral policies in order to increase employment as a
means of accelerating poverty reduction.

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

Compared to other regions, SSA lags behind in progress towards universal primary
education (UPE) (United Nations 2006a). Between 1990 and 2004, net enrolment
rates increased in SSA from 53.0 per cent to 64.2 per cent, and in North Africa from
80.6 per cent to 94.0 per cent. Even though progress has been made, efforts need to
be scaled up in most African countries to reach UPE by 2015.

Some countries have made significant progress in primary education as in the case
of Ethiopia, where enrolment more than doubled from 22 per cent in 1990 to 47
per cent in 2004 (United Nations 2006b) due to large-scale investments in government
schools, which now serve nearly 90 per cent of students in primary and
secondary schools (World Bank 2005). However, the increase in enrolment needs
to be matched by proportional increases in teaching staff and materials to guarantee
adequate quality of education. This is true in Ethiopia as in other SSA countries. It
is estimated that to reach UPE in SSA the current stock of teachers has to increase
by almost 20 per cent each year (World Bank and IMF 2005).

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

The ratio of girls to boys in gross primary school enrolment increased over the 1991-
2004 period from 0.84 to 0.89 in SSA and from 0.82 to 0.94 in North Africa.
However, the ratio for secondary enrolment in SSA dropped between 1999 and
2004 from 0.82 to 0.79 and that for tertiary enrolment from 0.69 to 0.63 (United
Nations 2006a).

Some countries such as Burkina Faso and Mali, have made significant progress
towards gender parity through school feeding programmes. Rwanda also made
substantial progress in gender parity as a result of its post-conflict reconstruction
programme, which benefited from generous donor support. Close monitoring of
the gender gap and a better targeting of policy interventions are needed to accelerate
progress towards gender equity. To fill this need for monitoring of gender
equity, ECA has developed a new tool, the African Gender and Development Index
(AGDI), an integrated index that measures integration of women in all aspects of a
country’s economic and political life (UNECA 2006b).

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

Substantive progress has also been made, especially in North African countries, in
reducing child mortality over the past decades. Between 1990 and 2004, under-five
mortality in this subregion was reduced from 88 to 37 deaths per 1,000 live births
and infant mortality from 66 to 20 deaths per 1,000 live births. In contrast, progress
in SSA countries has been very modest (United Nations 2006a).

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

The proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel shows a massive
improvement in North Africa from 40 per cent to 71 per cent over the 1990-2004
period. For SSA, the progress has been very modest, from 42 to 46 per cent over
the same period (United Nations 2006a). It is estimated that SSA needs to triple its
health workforce, adding more than one million workers to reach the health-related
MDGs (World Bank and IMF 2005).

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Currently, it is estimated that more than 25 million Africans live with HIV, and 2
million out of the 2.8 million AIDS-related deaths in 2005 were in Africa. In the 38
hardest hit African countries, it is projected that there will be 19 million additional
deaths due to AIDS between 2010 and 2015. The second part of this sub-section
discusses the challenges caused by HIV/AIDS in more detail.

In the fight against malaria, African countries committed themselves in 2000 to
dramatically increase the provision of insecticide-treated nets. Remarkable success in
the provision of nets to children under five has been recorded in such countries as
Eritrea and Malawi, reaching a coverage of 60 per cent and 36 per cent, respectively
(WHO and UNICEF 2006). With respect to tuberculosis, the situation worsened
in SSA, with an increase in prevalence from 337 per 100,000 of the population in
1990 to 492 in 2004. In North Africa, tuberculosis is less of a problem with only 52
cases out of 100,000 of the population in 2004.

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

While total carbon dioxide emission increased between 1990 and 2003 from 228 to
413 millions of metric tons in North Africa and from 416 to 530 millions of metric
tons in SSA, other indicators of environmental quality have improved. For example,
the proportion of the population with access to an improved water source increased
from 49 per cent in 1990 to 56 per cent in 2004 in SSA and from 89 per cent to 91
per cent in North Africa. Likewise, access to improved sanitation rose from 65 per
cent to 77 per cent in North Africa and from 32 per cent to 37 per cent in SSA over
the 1990-2004 period (United Nations 2006a).

The rural sector remains especially marginalized relative to urban areas in access to
drinking water, with only 42 per cent of the rural population having access to an
improved water source in 2004 as compared to 80 per cent for the urban population.
There are also large disparities between countries. In 2004, Ethiopia had the lowest
coverage in the world of rural population with safe drinking water - only 11 per cent.

In contrast, Burundi and Gambia had a coverage of 77 per cent in the same year. The
rapid increase in the urban population, low investment in new water supply systems,and poor maintenance of existing water networks in Africa constitute major challenges
to adequate provision of drinking water in most African countries (United
Nations 2006a; WHO and UNICEF 2006).

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

Over the past few years, African countries have developed partnerships that should
improve the continent’s access to external development finance and export markets.
These developments are discussed in chapter 3 of this report (also see UNECA
2006b).

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Article Tags: economic growth, job creation, MDGs, North Africa, poverty reduction, primary school enrolment, social development, SSA, UNECA, United Nations, United Nations



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