Another famine threatens Africa

Not so long ago, investment bankers and economic analysts were saying Africa was the next big thing in global growth. Rising foreign investment, soaring GDP rates and an emerging ‘middle class’ were seen as evidence of a new era dawning. But today, much of the continent is again threatened by its familiar enemies of drought and war. By some estimates, over 40 million Africans in a dozen countries are now in need of humanitarian assistance because of food shortages that have expanded from the Horn of Africa to South Sudan and into the farthest corners of southern Africa. The crisis began last year with the El Nino weather pattern. This causes a periodic worldwide shift caused by Pacific Ocean warming, but the latest one has been heightened and intensified by climate change, making it the most extreme in decades. It has brought months of drought to countries across East Africa and Southern Africa, with the effects persisting this year.

In the Horn of Africa, crops are failing and herdsmen are watching their animals die. In Zambia, the drought is causing a major hydro reservoir to dry up, leading to a huge loss of electricity generation, which in turn is resulting in mine shutdowns and layoffs. And in countries such as Zimbabwe and South Africa, the drought is causing poor harvests, triggering steep rises in food prices and forcing governments to import expensive foreign food or to plead for help.

 Ethiopia despite its reputation as a country of famine in the early 1980s, rebounded to become one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies in recent years. But now hunger is making a comeback. The most severe drought in a half-century has swept across huge swaths of Ethiopia, and an estimated 10.2 million Ethiopians now need humanitarian aid. One charity, Save the Children, has classified the Ethiopian situation as a “code-red emergency” – as serious as the war in Syria. But despite urgent appeals, only about half of the needed $1.4-billion (U.S.) in food aid has arrived so far.

“The present situation here keeps me awake at night,” said John Graham, country director in Ethiopia for Save the Children. “If these emergency funds do not arrive in time, there is no question that there will be a critical fracture in the food-aid supply pipeline during the main ‘hungry season,’ which peaks in August,” he said in a statement. “The situation here is as grave as I have ever seen it in the 19 years I have spent in Ethiopia and we now only have a tiny fraction of time for the international community to help to stop this. Families should not be put in a position where they need to make heartbreaking decisions about what they use precious water for – to drink and cook with, or to bathe their children and prevent the spread of disease,” Mr. Graham said. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/devastating-drought-threatens-to-unravel-economic-growth-in-africa/article28762210/

With a population of 95 million, Ethiopia is the second-most populous country in Africa. But about 80 per cent of its population is rural, leaving it highly vulnerable to drought. More than 400,000 children will suffer from severe malnutrition in Ethiopia this year, according to projections, while a further 1.7 million children, pregnant women and young mothers are at risk of falling into severe malnutrition if they don’t get help soon. More than 2.5 million children are likely to drop out of the education system because of the drought. In addition, there are 5.8 million Ethiopians who need urgent access to drinking water. The water shortages have left them vulnerable to disease and illness.

In neighbouring Somalia, an estimated 4.7 million people are in need of humanitarian aid. In some regions, the drought has killed up to 80 per cent of the livestock, and pastoralists are desperately searching for pastures and water for their animals.

In South Sudan, where one of Africa’s most catastrophic wars has been raging for more than two years, at least 40,000 people in one region are already on the brink of starvation. Only the remoteness of their region has prevented an official famine declaration – it is considered too dangerous for aid workers to visit. In total, about a quarter of South Sudan’s 12 million people are facing a hunger crisis and in need of humanitarian aid – primarily because of war, not drought. In some districts, people are surviving by scavenging for fish and water lilies in swamps, but the water will soon dry up as the rainy season ends.

Southern Africa, traditionally less prone to malnutrition than the Horn of Africa, has been severely hit by the latest drought. From Botswana and Namibia to Mozambique and Madagascar, much of the region is suffering the lowest level of rainfall in 35 years. In Mozambique, prices were 50 percent higher than last year.

“Over the coming year, humanitarian partners should prepare themselves for food insecurity levels and food insecure population numbers in southern Africa to be at their highest levels since the 2002-2003 food crisis,” a statement last week by United Nations and European Union researchers said.

Even a country such as South Africa, with one of the continent’s most advanced economies, is suffering badly from the drought. Lack of rainfall has led to declarations of agricultural emergencies in five of the country’s nine provinces, and the government will be forced to import maize. Soaring food prices are pushing thousands of South Africans into poverty. In Lesotho, and Swaziland planting delayed by two months or more has severely impacted maize yields

Malawi

The country is experiencing its first maize deficit in a decade, pushing the price 73 percent higher than the December 2015 average.

Zimbabwe

The drought is particularly bad in southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, where an estimated three million people (about 30 per cent of the population) are in desperate need of food aid. Animals are dying and harvests are failing in the worst drought in a quarter-century. Food production in Zimbabwe had fallen by half compared to last year and maize was 53 percent more expensive. President Robert Mugabe’s government has appealed for $1.5-billion (U.S.) in emergency humanitarian aid, mostly to pay for food imports and to repair irrigation equipment. The government says it will need to import 1.5 million tonnes of maize, the main food staple.

Zambia

The drought has wreaked havoc on Zambia’s economy, not only by hurting its farmers but also by damaging the supply of electricity to its copper mines. Almost all of Zambia’s electricity is generated by hydro power, mainly from the huge Kariba Dam. But the dam’s reservoir has fallen to just 12 per cent of its capacity, forcing Zambia to cut the power supply to its mining companies by 30 per cent. This, in turn, has led to higher costs and layoffs at the mines.

South Africa

Food prices are soaring in South Africa because of the drought, with the cost of maize rising by about 75 per cent over the past year. The World Bank estimates the drought pushed 50,000 South Africans into poverty last year. The country will need to import 3.8 million tonnes of maize this year, forcing prices even higher. Five of the country’s nine provinces have declared agricultural emergencies and food prices are expected to rise by a further 20 per cent this year.

South Sudan - a failed state?

South Sudan is on the verge of famine and there is $6bn missing. More than four million people, a third of its population, face serious food shortages and tens of thousands are on the cusp of catastrophic famine. South Sudan is in economic crisis – and is approaching the status of a failed state. South Sudan has run out of money, having squandered the billions of its own oil wealth and that of international donors that were intended to help give the young, and supposedly oil-rich, state a chance, but not everyone is suffering.

In Juba smart black SUVs can be seen parked outside the handful of smart hotels and restaurants, or driving along the pot-holed roads that lead to grand residences, government ministries and military compounds. The Cadillacs. Mercedes GLs and luxury Hummers would not look out of place in a Belgravia or Knightsbridge square. In neighbouring Kenya and Uganda, property records show some of the best houses in the smartest suburbs are registered under the names of high-profile South Sudanese politicians and bureaucrats. Many such homes are worth more than $1m. In Washington DC the names of South Sudanese individuals or holding companies are publicly listed against homes worth more than $3m. In Colorado, where the world’s rich ski, and in Melbourne, Australia, rated one of the world’s most “liveable” cities, it is no secret that a small number of elite South Sudan business and political leaders have properties. Details of this hidden wealth appropriated by South Sudan’s elite have been collated by United Nations investigators.

The UN’s special representative in South Sudan, Toby Lanzer, said last year that the government was struggling to pay for even the most basic necessities; under its own rules the IMF is not allowed to intervene while the civil war continues. Sources within the Paris Club group of creditor nations that provide debt relief to developing countries, estimate that some $4bn is missing, unaccounted for. One of them told The Independent: “There may simply be no books to examine.” Other agencies that have tried to calculate the scale of embezzlement in what is now South Sudan say it could amount to as much as $10bn over the past 11 years.

President Salva Kiir appointed and paid 745 generals who each had their own network of loyalists to finance. By 2013, when the civil war erupted, the military payroll had climbed to 240,000, six times its size a few years earlier. Supposed defence spending may now consume close to half the national budget. Meanwhile senior commanders commonly steal the salaries of low-ranking personnel, while others pocket the pay of “ghost soldiers” who exist only on paper, investigators say.

Over the past two years, the US has spent more than $2bn; China has offered extended lines of credit; and last year Qatar offered $500m to help South Sudan’s struggling banking system. Britain has contributed £242m for humanitarian aid and a further £93m to help refugees and displaced people over the past two years, with a further £200m in aid earmarked for this year. The World Bank approved a $38m loan to build rural roads and highways, but almost none of that promised work has even been started, and a country almost the size of France still has barely 60 miles of metalled roads.

The Hell of South Sudan

South Sudan is the world's newest country. In a country almost the size of France there is only 100 kilometres of tarmac road. A two-year bloody conflict between mainly Dinka and Nuer groups, allied to warring government and opposition forces, and now spreading into other inter-ethnic struggles, is destroying the country’s once potentially oil-rich future. With the 2015/16 harvest non-existent, and nothing being planted because of the conflict, all of South Sudan’s food has to brought in from neighbouring states.

2.3 million people, one in five of the population, have been forced from their homes. 185,000 people have sought refuge in UN-designated protection camps. The International Crisis Group estimates 100,000 people, possibly more, have been killed. The UN estimates that 2.8 million people are currently facing "acute" food and nutrition insecurity in South Sudan’s Greater Upper Nile states. 25 per cent of South Sudan’s population who are in urgent need of food aid. Just over 6 million require basic humanitarian help.

Canals for Africa

The Nile River has been navigable since the time of the pharaohs some 4,000 years ago, as have sections of the Niger, Benue, Congo and Zambezi Rivers. Boats today carry passengers and freight across Lake Malawi, Lake Victoria and Lake Tanzania while riverboats provide essential services along sections of the Niger, Benue, Congo and Nile Rivers. There may be scope for to connect navigable rivers to develop an inland, canal-based transportation network. Such a system would benefit the African continent, which remains largely dependent on fragmented land transport systems. The headwaters of several rivers that empty into Lakes Tanzania and Victoria originate in the same geographic area between the lakes, in sufficiently close proximity to each other to perhaps warrant linking them by building navigable canals to transit shallow draft vessels. Lake Victoria empties through a series of smaller lakes and waterfalls into the White Nile River, perhaps with the potential to build navigation locks to connect the Upper Nile River to Lake Victoria. Lake Tanzania empties into the headwaters of the Congo River that has several navigable sections. There may be scope to develop river navigation between Lake Tanzania and the navigable sections of the Congo River, allowing access to Lake Victoria. It may also be possible to develop future canal navigation between navigable sections of the Congo River and its mouth at the Atlantic Ocean. In the southeastern region, a section of the Zambezi River is navigable with the potential to develop canal navigation north to Lake Malawi. There may be a basis to construct a navigable canal between Lakes Malawi and Tanzania, using the beds of several rivers and streams that flow in the area between the lakes, in northeastern Zambia. It may further be possible to develop navigation between two large dams on the Zambezi River, Kariba and Cabora Bassa. Construction of special canals along a series of rapids could provide river navigation to the Indian Ocean.

In the U.S., inland waterway freight transportation can move bulk and container shipments of over 100 TEUs at lower cost per unit distance than either truck or railway transportation. African railway networks remain regional with their own distinctive railway gauge. Paved road networks are to be found in major cities and in certain regions, but only a network of unpaved roads is available for most of the continent’s long distance connections for the truck transport industry. Trucks carry most of Africa’s long-distance freight. A navigable inland waterway system could offer a much shorter sailing distance than an ocean voyage through the Strait of Gibraltar. In southern Sudan and northeastern Congo, headwaters flow from the same region into the White Nile and Congo Rivers, allowing for possible evaluation of building a navigable canal to link the two rivers.

http://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/a-trans-africa-inland-waterway-system

Black Pride?

Men and women bleach their skin to look white. According to research by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Nigerians have been graded as the nation with the highest consumption of bleaching products: 77% of Nigerian women bleach, followed by Togo with 59% while South Africa with 35%; and Mali at 25%, making it the top four nations that bleach their skin.

A lot of it is down to low self-esteem. Cosmetologists are making a lot of money off the bleachers even though the risks of contracting skin cancer on the long run is high. The business of whitening lotion is a multi-million dollar business. Many of the components of the skin-lightening creams are not only fake but also harmful to the skin. Some years ago, products that contains hydroquinone and mercury were banned in Nigeria but somehow they found their ways back to the shelves with women using it.

According to Paul Orhii, the director general of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Nigeria, bleaching creams are not approved but one way or the other, they are smuggled illegally into the country:

“The use of Glutathione as a skin whitener is not approved. The alarming increase in the unapproved use of Glutathione administered intravenously as a skin-whitening agent at very high doses is unsafe and may result in serious consequences. Furthermore, other chemicals that have been medically proven to be injurious to health such as Hydroquinone above 2%, and topical Corticosteroids have also been incorporated into cosmetic products for skin lightening or skin toning. Banned chemicals also include Boric acid and Lanolin in baby products. The use of these chemicals in cosmetic products can cause various ranges of skin deformation, injury to skin and cancers. This unethical practice by manufacturers, coupled with ignorance on the part of consumers, has left many skins permanently damaged.”

Recently, Ivory Coast, banned bleaching creams in the country. Despite this directive, the business thrives illegally in the country.

“The number of people with side effects caused by these medicines is really high,” said Christian Doudouko, who is a current member of Ivory Coast’s pharmaceutical authority. He also added that such products causes skin cancer.

“Mercury is the very dangerous chemical that medical officials found in the skin lightening creams that sickened the women. It can damage the kidneys and wreak havoc on the nervous system,” Dr. Susan Taylor, dermatologist said.

“Skin cancer and hyperpigmetation will catch up with them sooner than later, they cannot escape it, what do you expect when you have removed the different layers of the skin over the years, the epidermis – which is the protective wrap that serves as a barrier to infections. Bleaching is harmful to the skin and also the organs,” explained Dr. Eunice Chukwu, an Abuja-based dermatologist.

https://www.naij.com/728758-research-bleaching-trending-men-women-africa-photos.html

Changing the economy

South Africa’s mining sector faces a bleak future. Falling commodity prices have led to more than 70,000 job losses and more job cuts loom. A further 50,000 employees face the risk of losing their jobs if no urgent action is taken. This is according to a statement released by the Mining Industry Association of Southern Africa (MIASA)

South Africa’s mining sector is grappling with its toughest period in the last 20 years. Mining firms in Africa’s most industrialized economy are struggling due to weakening global commodities prices for the country’s platinum, gold, iron ore and coal exports.

Experts attending the 20th meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts (ICE) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) said yesterday that price decreases in oil and other commodities had shown many economies that they needed to diversify the economies. African countries have been advised to transform their economies through industrialisation to avoid shocks created by declines in commodity prices.

Resource rich African countries are addicts that are in need of rehabilitation now that the good days are over, according to former Zimbabwe finance minister Tendai Biti. Resource poor countries like Rwanda, Kenya and Ethiopia are experiencing growth, while resource rich countries like Nigeria and Angola are battling, Biti told the Investing in African Mining Indaba. "They [resource poor countries] have moved to fully diversify their economies," he said. "Diversification is key, but African leaders [in resource rich countries] don't learn. The boom and slumps have been with us for a long time. It [the lessons] should have been learnt a long time ago." He used the example of the Zimbabwean Marange diamond field, which has seen $2bn worth of diamond extraction per annum since being discovered in 2006. The state only got a small slice of the revenue and the community got even less. Biti said there are 76 000 women in India polishing the diamonds of Marange, an operation that should surely be done by the local community in Zimbabwe, he said. "You see poverty where the diamonds have been extracted," he said. "It is the most underdeveloped societies."

Countries rich in mineral and energy resources are infamous for catching the so-called Dutch Disease. This is an economic term that explains the negative consequences caused by an unnatural focus on a specific sector, to the detriment of all other sectors. African countries, especially ones with extractive institutions, are often prone to this dilemma.

Prof Humphrey Moshi from the University of Dar es Salaam's Economics Department said agriculture had to be given priority for the continent's meaningful industrialisation. "We need to invest in agriculture so that we produce to feed the regional markets and produce more goods for processing," he said.

As the politicians and academics try to solve Africa's economic problems, they should note that only  a change of social system will benefit actual people. 

Forgetting All About Africa Again

Africa has achieved much progress, but many challenges remain - including inequalities in income, politics and between groups. Far from a continued scramble for Africa, as some analysts exalted only a few years ago, we're far more likely to see a potential re-marginalisation of sub-Saharan Africa in the years ahead. Three factors underpin this.

The first is changes in China - today Africa's largest trading partner, but a country whose own economic rebalancing has reduced its thirst for commodities. This is, of course, temporary. Eventually India's economic awakening should drive the next commodities super-cycle and Africa should regain some of its lost momentum. But that is still some years hence. In the meantime, global growth elsewhere remains anaemic and insufficient to replace China's previous demand for Africa's natural resources.

Saudi Arabia's determination to protect its global share of the oil market, resulting in an oil price per barrel hovering below US$30, has hit Africa's oil producers very hard. Large oil producers such as Nigeria and Angola have seen their main source of revenue slashed and others, including aspirant and marginal producers - such as Ghana - face strong headwinds. Countries such as Tanzania and Mozambique, who were counting on the potential of huge oil and gas incomes, have discovered that interest in exploiting their natural bounty has waned.

Together with the impact of the shale revolution in the USA, Africa's oil is not in current demand and this has translated into economic pain and strategic marginalisation, particularly for West Africa.

Secondly, development assistance aimed at promoting inclusive growth, poverty alleviation, infrastructure development and good governance (traditionally from the West) is being decimated as Europe scrambles to respond to crises in Syria and elsewhere. Millions of poor Africans stand the risk of losing the sustenance provided by humanitarian and development assistance at a time when their own governments do not provide. Sub-Saharan Africa faces large constraints on the capacity of governments to deliver on development .Business and the private sector, we are told, have to step up and assume their rightful place as the drivers of poverty alleviation, humanitarian assistance and employment creation. By default, the private sector is interested in profit. Without appropriate regulation and oversight, its role exacerbates divisions rather than promoting inclusive growth.

The third factor relates to a change in global patterns of political violence. Great power games have shifted to the Middle East. The Sunni/Shia divide now pits Saudi Arabia against Iran in an ever-widening series of proxy wars, in a region that is geo-strategically important, heavily armed, politically unstable and already host to an important number of proxy wars. Subsequently, for the next few years, sub-Saharan Africa may get less attention and less money. Rather than providing a breathing space for autocrats who believe in their right to govern indefinitely, we believe that the pressure from below will increase. Instability is moving from rebellions in distant rural districts to urban areas as social protest and violence around elections continue to rise. Expectations from African citizens are high and leaders will inevitably struggle to respond to the demands of their young, restless and connected urban populace; who are better educated than before, but with few employment prospects.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201602092273.html

Sharing out the billions?

The wealth gap between the world's richest and poorest has continued to widen in recent years. About 15 percent of Africa's population lives on less than $1.00 per day, according to the Brookings researchers .

Researchers at the Brookings Institution suggest that the generosity of just one billionaire would completely restructure the poverty landscape in Swaziland, whose economy is nearly 4,000 times smaller than that of the U.S. More than 40 percent of Swaziland's 1.3 million citizens live below the global poverty line of $1.90 per day, but these people could be hauled over that benchmark by a single individual's act of philanthropy, according to the report.

The Brookings researchers calculated the net worth of the richest billionaire in a handful of emerging and developing economies. In Swaziland's case, that billionaire was international business icon Nathan Kirsh, whose net worth clocks in at about $3.9 billion. If Kirsh pledged to give half of his wealth to the citizens of Swaziland over the course of the next 15 years (not entirely unlike Bill and Melinda Gates' Giving Pledge), extreme poverty would be eradicated from the country. South Africa's richest billionaire would only be able to lower the country's poverty rate from 18 percent to 14 percent, even with a net worth of $7.4 billion.

Findings from the study was that it's much harder to pull African countries out of poverty than it is countries elsewhere, thanks in part to "the depth of poverty in Africa" and the region's relatively high prices for basic necessities.

Of course Swaziland's despotic monarch could also make a huge difference by giving up his wealth. Socialists don't call for the rich to share with the poor but call for the expropriation of the expropriators. 

Somalia's children in need

The United Nations has warned that over 58,000 children would starve to death in Somalia if they are not provided with urgent humanitarian assistance. 

UN aid chief for Somalia Peter de Clercq said that more than 300,000 children under the age of five are acutely malnourished. The UN official also said that they urgently need medical, food, and other humanitarian support.

"The level of malnutrition, especially among children, is of serious concern, with nearly 305,000 children under the age of five years acutely malnourished," the official said, adding, "We estimate that 58,300 children face death if they are not treated."

The UN has said that nearly one million people are struggling every day to meet their food needs. 4.7 million people, or nearly 40 percent of Somalia, stand in need of humanitarian aid.

The grim assessment comes as severe drought continues to hit several regions in the impoverished war-torn country. Northern Somali areas are especially hard hit by the ongoing drought. The drought has been exacerbated by by an exceptionally strong El Nino weather pattern.

"The food security and malnutrition situation in Somalia is alarming, especially in parts of Puntland and Somaliland, which have been hard hit by drought exacerbated by El Nino," the UN said in a statement, adding "We are deeply concerned...with severe drought conditions intensifying in Puntland and Somaliland, many more people risk relapsing into crisis."

The UN has appealed for urgent support and humanitarian assistance. The world body is calling for USD 885 million in aid to assist people in conflict- and disaster-affected regions.  

Africa's Non Green Revolution

One of the major strategies to reduce poverty in sub-Saharan Africa is through policies to increase and modernise agricultural production. Up to 90 per cent of people in some African countries are smallholder farmers reliant on agriculture, for whom agricultural innovation, such as using new seed varieties and cultivation techniques, holds potential benefit but also great risk.

Agricultural policies aimed at alleviating poverty in Africa could be making things worse, according to research by the University of EastAnglia (UEA). The study finds that so-called 'green revolution' policies in Rwanda - claimed by the government, international donors and organisations such as the International Monetary Fund to be successful for the economy and in alleviating poverty - may be having very negative impacts on the poorest.

In the 1960s and 70s policies supporting new seeds for marketable crops, sold at guaranteed prices, helped many farmers and transformed economies in Asian countries. These became known as "green revolutions". The new wave of green revolution policies in sub-Saharan Africa is supported by multinational companies and western donors, and is impacting the lives of tens, even hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers, according to the study's lead author Dr Neil Dawson.

The study reveals that only a relatively wealthy minority have been able to keep to enforced modernisation because the poorest farmers cannot afford the risk of taking out credit for the approved inputs, such as seeds and fertilizers. Their fears of harvesting nothing from new crops and the potential for the government to seize and reallocate their land means many choose to sell up instead.

The findings tie in with recent debates about strategies to feed the world in the face of growing populations, for example the influence of wealthy donors such as the Gates Foundation, initiative's such as the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, and multinational companies such as Monsanto in pushing agricultural modernisation in Africa. There have also been debates about small versus large farms being best to combat hunger in Africa, while struggles to maintain local control over land and food production, for example among the Oromo people in Ethiopia, have been highlighted.

Dr Dawson, a senior research associate in UEA's School of International Development, said: "Similar results are emerging from other experiments in Africa. Agricultural development certainly has the potential to help these people, but instead these policies appear to be exacerbating landlessness and inequality for poorer rural inhabitants. Many of these policies have been hailed as transformative development successes, yet that success is often claimed on the basis of weak evidence through inadequate impact assessments. And conditions facing African countries today are very different from those past successes in Asia some 40 years ago. Such policies may increase aggregate production of exportable crops, yet for many of the poorest smallholders they strip them of their main productive resource, land. This study details how these imposed changes disrupt subsistence practices, exacerbate poverty, impair local systems of trade and knowledge, and threaten land ownership. It is startling that the impacts of policies with such far-reaching impacts for such poor people are, in general, so inadequately assessed."

The research looked in-depth at Rwanda's agricultural policies and the changes impacting the wellbeing of rural inhabitants in eight villages in the country's mountainous west. Here chronic poverty is common and people depend on the food they are able to grow on their small plots. Farmers traditionally cultivated up to 60 different types of crops, planting and harvesting in overlapping cycles to prevent shortages and hunger. However, due to high population density in Rwanda's hills, agricultural policies have been imposed which force farmers to modernise with new seed varieties and chemical fertilisers, to specialise in single crops and part with "archaic" agricultural practices.

Dr Dawson and his UEA co-authors Dr Adrian Martin and Prof Thomas Sikor recommend that not only should green revolution policies be subject to much broader and more rigorous impact assessments, but that mitigation for poverty-exacerbating impacts should be specifically incorporated into such policies. In Rwanda, that means encouraging land access for the poorest and supporting traditional practices during a gradual and voluntary modernisation.

Breaking Free

Afrobarometer is based on face-to-face interviews with more than 52,700 citizens in 33 countries in 2014-2015.

Poverty remains widespread in Africa. Almost half of all respondents say they went without enough food (46 percent), clean water (46 percent) or needed medical care (49 percent) at least once or twice during the previous year. And many of them did so “many times” or “always.”

 But Africa isn’t uniformly poor; countries differ enormously in their levels of lived poverty. People in Gabon and Togo went without basic necessities at about 18 times the rate of those in Mauritius, and four times as frequently as residents of Cape Verde and Algeria.

End female genital mutilation

The real scale of female genital mutilation (FGM) worldwide has been revealed in alarming new statistics on the eve of International Day of Zero Tolerance of FGM. At least 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone ritual cutting, half of them living in just three countries, according to UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency. The UNICEF data covers 30 countries, but half of the girls and women who have been cut live in Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia. The new global figure includes nearly 70 million more girls and women than UNICEF estimated in 2014. About 44 million victims of FGM around the world are aged 14 or younger, and the majority of girls who have had their genitals mutilated were cut before they were five years old, Unicef’sresearch found.

Somalia has the highest prevalence of women and girls who have been cut—98% of the female population between the ages of 15 and 49.

In Guinea, where 97% of girls aged 15 to 49 are FGM victims despite the practice being outlawed, Unicef staff described seeing girls taken away from their families against their will to be cut, on the orders of village authorities. One five-year-old died from her wounds.

Other countries FGM rates were , Djibouti 93%; Sierra Leone 90%; Mali 89%; Egypt 87%; Sudan 87%; Eritrea 83%; Burkina Faso 76% and The Gambia 75%

Unicef said the picture was optimistic in some countries, with FGM prevalence rates declining by 41% in Liberia, 31% in Burkina Faso, 30% in Kenya and 27% in Egypt over the last 30 years.