5.10 - Challenges and Opportunities
Conflict
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Conflict is a repeating theme in Sub-Saharan Africa's history. Without question colonization contributed significantly to the problem - creating arbitrary boundaries that didn't respect ethnic groups, by pitting one ethnic group against another and by erasing traditional means of conflict resolution. Conflicts have erupted and continue to erupt repeatedly. Lets look at a few:
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
The war in the DRC is one of Africa’s deadliest. More than five million people have been killed in the Congolese war. It began in 1998 with the involvement of about 20 different armed groups who maraud the country’s vast jungles. Many of these groups fight each other, while others from neighboring countries use the Congolese territory to launch attacks on their home countries. Others simply exploit the country’s mineral resources, including gold, platinum and coal fueling the various conflicts further. In the first half of 2019, about 732,000 new displacements were recorded, 718,000 associated with conflict. About 18,500 UN peacekeepers, including military and police personnel, provide security for civilians threatened by the armed groups and support the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants.
South Sudan
After a brutal civil war, South Sudan declared its independence from Sudan in 2011. However, tensions persisted over natural resources, specifically access to the oil fields in the newly-independent South. Relations have also been strained between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement led by President Salva Kiir, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition led by Mr. Kiir’s former vice president Riek Machar. Since civil war broke out in 2013, about 380,000 people are reported to have been killed and more than two million have been forced to flee their homes. A 2015 peace deal fell apart after clashes between government forces and rebels.
Central African Republic (CAR)
CAR has suffered more than six years of conflict and is an ongoing civil war. More than 1.1 million people have fled their homes in a country of about 5 million people, the highest percentage ever recorded in any country. In February 2019, the Government and 14 armed groups signed a peace agreement which has led to fewer direct clashes.
Nigeria
The Boko Harem insurgency in Nigeria that began in 2009 has extended to neighboring countries, including Cameroon, Chad and Niger. The jihadist group’s initial objective was to confront what it perceived as the westernization of Nigerian culture. More than 300,000 people have been killed in Nigeria’s long-running conflict with Boko Haram. About two million people have fled their homes and another 22,000 are missing, believed to have been conscripted. In April 2014, the group abducted 276 girls from a school in Chibok, a village in Borno State, northeast Nigeria. A few managed to escape or be rescued. More than 112 girls remain missing.
Somalia
The Somali civil war began in 1991 when the government of President Siad Barre was overthrown. Armed groups started competing for power. Without a central administration, Somalia became a failed state, with rival warlords and different groups controlling the capital Mogadishu and other southern parts of the country. In 2012, a new federal government was constituted. The same year Al-Shabaab declared allegiance to the militant group al-Qaeda. Fighting between armed Islamist groups and pro-government forces has led to the deaths of thousands of civilians and the displacement of over two million people. Despite gains against the group, Al-Shabaab insurgents continue to launch sporadic attacks against civilians and the government.
Food Insecurity
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The causes of food insecurity in Africa are many but they begin with poverty. Poverty is a principal cause of hunger in Africa and elsewhere. Individuals living in poverty often cannot afford food of sufficient quality or quantity to live a healthy life. Especially important in Africa has been the role of conflict. Conflict and violence can have direct and indirect impacts on all levels of the food system, leading to food insecurity and hunger. Conflict often puts constraints on employment and income opportunities, which affects an individual’s ability to acquire food. Conflict can also affect exports and imports, which can lead to limited food availability and affordability. Availability of food can also be affected if resources (land, equipment, etc.) used to produce food are destroyed. In 2017, conflict was the major cause of food insecurity and hunger in 18 countries, affecting about 74 million individuals. Eleven of these countries were in Africa, which totaled about 37 million people. Northern Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and South Sudan account for the majority of these individuals.
Environmental challenges—including erosion, desertification, deforestation, drought and water shortages—can have detrimental impacts on food security. In 2017, 23 countries experienced food crises due to climate and weather conditions. Two-thirds of these countries were in Africa, affecting approximately 32 million people. The causes of hunger are often intertwined. For example, in 2017, Uganda faced food insecurity due to a drought that occurred in 2016. During this period, Uganda was already experiencing food insecurity due to an influx of refugees. Many of these challenges are man-made: deforestation, climate change and erosion.
Maintaining adequate food supplies in Africa is complicated by the lack of refrigerated storage facilities, transportation that is unreliable and supplies that are unpredictable.
Water Insecurity
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Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest number of water-stressed countries of any other place on the planet and about a third of Africans live in a "water stressed" environment. It is estimated that by 2030, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will be living in areas of high water stress, which will likely displace anywhere between 24 million and 700 million people as conditions become increasingly unlivable.
The most apparent impact of water scarcity in Africa is on the continent's health. People in water deprived regions to turn to unsafe water resources, which, according to the World Health Organization, contributes to the spread of waterborne diseases including typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery and diarrhea, and to the spread of diseases such as malaria whose vectors rely on such water resources, and can lead to diseases such as trachoma, plague, and typhus. Because the majority of Africa remains dependent on an agricultural lifestyle and 80% to 90% of all families in rural Africa rely on producing their own food, water scarcity translates to a loss of food security. More than 70% of agriculture practiced in Sub-Saharan Africa is rain-fed agriculture. With the increasing variability of current weather patterns the crops and harvests are more prone to being affected by droughts and floods.
The lack of water is an often insurmountable obstacle to helping oneself. You can't grow food, you can't build housing, you can't stay healthy, you can't stay in school and you can't keep working. Without clean water, the possibility of breaking out of the cycle of poverty is incredibly slim. African women are disproportionally burdened by the scarcity of clean drinking water. In most African societies, women are seen as the collectors, managers, and guardians of water. For women and children especially, this crisis is real. With unclean water sources often miles from villages, many of the able-bodied members of a community are forced to spend hours each day simply finding and transporting water. The typical container used for water collection in Africa, the jerry can, weighs over 40 pounds when it's completely full. Imagine how demanding it would be to carry the equivalent of a 5-year-old child for three hours out of each day. And some women carry even more, up to 70 pounds in a barrel carried on her back. In addition, the issue of water scarcity in Africa prevents many young children, from attending school and receiving an education as they are expected to not only aid their mothers in water retrieval but to also help with the demands of household chores that are made more time-intensive because of a lack of readily available water. Furthermore, a lack of clean water means the absence of sanitary facilities and latrines in schools, and so once puberty hits, this has a more serious impact on female children. In terms of lost educational opportunity, it is estimated that this would result in 272 million more school attendance days per year if adequate investment were made in drinking water and sanitation.
Even Africa's wealthiest country, South Africa, has experienced recent and severe water shortages. After years of severe drought, Cape Town, South Africa found itself running out of water. Two years ago, Cape Town faced becoming the first major city in the world to run out of drinkable water as it dealt with serious water scarcity.
Since 2018, the city’s largest supplier of water, the Theewaterskloof Dam, has seen an impressive increase in dam levels; from 11% on March 9, 2018, to 100% on Oct. 2, 2020.
While recent rainfall has played a large part in this improvement, the city’s management strategies and the public’s water-saving efforts are a model. From reusing bath and shower water, to enforcing a limit on activities that require large amounts of water resources, Cape Town’s residents and businesses managed to stabilize and improve the dire situation.
Among the strategies employed:
- In the immediate response to the water crisis, the municipality diverted water from the agricultural sector to supply the city.
- Residents were limited to using only 50 litres of water per residence per day — to put that in context, it takes about 10 litres of water to flush a toilet.
- Pools were no longer allowed to be filled, cars could no longer be washed, and watering the garden became a nightly activity in order to reduce evaporation.
- Water Management Devices (WMD) that set limits for water usage on properties were insatalled. The devices took the place of traditional water meters and were programmed to shut off a property’s water supply once it had reached the daily limit.
- Households that used high volumes of water and surpassed limits faced heavy fines.
HIV/AIDS
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The leading cause of death for African women of reproductive age is AIDS. 59% of all people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa are women. About 26% of the female population is living with HIV as compared to 17% of men.
Sub-Saharan Africa with 14% of the world's population, has 70% of the all people living with HIV, a total of about 25.7 million people. The epidemic has lead to 15 million orphaned children. Millions of teachers, skilled farmers, craftspeople, health-care workers and other trained professionals have been lost. As a result of concerted local, national and international effort the epidemic has declined significantly in the last 20 years with new HIV infections cut in half since 2001. This has been primarily due to increased eduction about prevention. Treatment has become more affordable with antiviral medications dropping in cost from about $10,000 per year in 2000 to $75 per year today. This is due to UN and government subsidies, private philanthropists, as well as cheap generic drugs from China and India. As a result 60 to 80% of Africans with HIV are now living longer, healthier lives and fewer children are orphaned. Nevertheless, about 1 million new infections occur each year and treatment is not available to everyone.
Rapid Growth and Impending Urbanization
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Sub-Saharan Africa is still majority rural (60%) and urbanization is a recent trend. In the 1960's only 15% lived in cities compared to 40% today and a projected 50% by 2030. Sub-Saharan African cities are unique in that natural increase and not rural-to-urban migration accounts for the majority of the growth. Urban birth rates are lower than in rural areas but they are still unusually high. Africa's high urban birth rates are related to widespread poverty, a lack of educational and employment opportunities and high incidence of disease due to inadequate health care, clean water and sanitation.
A lack of affordable housing and jobs is in part due to the economic reliance on the extraction of raw materials which is more rural in focus. Many governments - both colonial and independent - have discouraged urban development for political reasons. With populations still mostly rural, politicians have been more focused on distributing limited government resources to rural areas rather than urban. .
Anti-urban biases combined with weak and corrupt African governments, has produced vast, unplanned one-story slums that surround older urban centers. 50 to 70% of Africa's urban population lives in these extremely crowded neighborhoods. Basic sanitation is absent, as is access to clean water. Transportation systems are haphazard.
Many slum dwellers seek employment in the informal economy. Gangs control many aspects of the informal economy in slum areas, such as electricity stolen from power-lines and distributed to individual homes. Slum dwellers have become a volatile political force, responsible for much of the violence associated with elections. Many Africans move out of cities back to their rural villages only to return to the city again. This constant migration contributes to instability in the region.
Water systems in African cities are underdeveloped, supplying only a few public spigots in a few areas and individual homes only in the wealthiest neighborhoods. Half-liter bags of chilled purified water have become part of the urban landscape across Africa. Since waste collection is inconsistent at best, these bags end up being disposed of in the poorest neighborhoods, clogging any existing sewer drains, increasing waterborne disease.