An estimated 200 million people on the continent are undernourished, and their numbers have increased by almost 20 percent since the early 1990s. The result is that more than a third of African children are stunted in their growth and must face a range of physical and cognitive challenges not faced by their better-fed peers. Undernutrition is the major risk factor underlying over 28 percent of all deaths in Africa (some 2.9 million deaths annually). The continuing human costs of inadequate food and nutrition are enormous, and the aggregate costs of food and nutrition insecurity at the national level impose a heavy burden on efforts to foster sustained economic growth and improved general welfare.
Poverty and health
Linking maternal death with poverty
This paper finds that there is a clear association between the risk of maternal death and a variety of poverty-related characteristics. Moreover there is an indication that maternal mortality is a sensitive marker of disadvantage, since non-maternal deaths did not exhibit such extreme clustering in the poorest groups. The authors demonstrate the magnitude of the poor-rich gap in maternal mortality, and should be a stimulus to setting and monitoring poverty-relevant development goals.
The Cairo consensus at 10: Population, Reproductive Health and ending poverty
This report from UNFPA focuses on world population, reproductive health and poverty ten years after the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action was agreed in Cairo. The report finds that many developing countries have made substantial progress in implementing the ICPD's recommendations. However, resources remain inadequate and the needs of the poorest populations are still not being met. Key challenges include the continued spread of HIV/AIDS, especially among the young, unmet need for family planning, and high rates of maternal mortality in the least-developed countries.
Food security, livelihoods and HIV/AIDS
This paper is intended both for managers and technical staff working either in food security and livelihoods or in HIV/AIDS and reproductive health who require an introduction to the linkages between the two areas, and as a guide to the many issues that need to be considered when carrying out assessments (or reviewing others’ assessments) and when planning interventions. The focus is specifically on economic impacts of AIDS, and does not address important emotional, psychological and social impacts.
The world's poor since the 1980s
Development Research Group Paper, World Bank
"The composition of world poverty has changed noticeably. Numbers of poor have fallen in Asia, but risen elsewhere. The share of the world’s poor living in Africa has risen dramatically. Not only has Africa emerged in the 1990s as the region with the highest incidence of poverty, the depth of poverty is also markedly higher than that found in other regions - suggesting that without lower inequality economic growth in Africa will have a harder time reducing poverty in the future than elsewhere. Looking forward, if the rates of progress against poverty that we have found for the last two decades of the twentieth century are maintained then we expect that the poverty rate for the developing world as a whole will fall to 15% by 2015, just short of the Millennium Development Goal of halving the 1990 poverty rate."
Achieving Food Security in Southern Africa
In 2001–3 in many countries in Southern Africa national grain stocks had been run down and grain imports were slow to arrive, so that localised harvest shortfalls quickly resulted in three- and four-fold increases in food prices which, for the large number of vulnerable people in the region, spelled crisis. In the end, the donor and government response but equally importantly the response of the commercial sector and people’s own ‘coping’ strategies meant that large-scale famine-related deaths were avoided in 2002 and 2003 but unacceptable levels of chronic food insecurity remain.
Economic pathways for Malawi's rural households
The recent food crisis has drawn attention to the fact that Malawi's poverty is deep-rooted and structural. Provision of temporary humanitarian relief and sustained safety net provision may alleviate the symptoms of chronic poverty but such interventions are not adequate as ends in themselves: they will not prevent similar crises occurring in the future, or develop the kind of resilience that households and communities need to be able to cope with crises.
Chronic Poverty Report 2004-2005
The Chronic Poverty Research Center's latest report examines what chronic poverty is and why it matters, who the chronically poor are, where they live, what causes poverty to be persistent and what should be done. A section of regional perspectives looks at the experience of chronic poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, transitional countries and China. The report argues that the chronically poor need targeted support, social assistance and social protection.
Extreme Poverty Spreading In Sub-Saharan Africa, says UN
Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has continued to grow for 20 years, Reuters reports. In its annual Industrial Development Report released on Tuesday, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) described the region as "the last frontier in the fight against abject poverty" and said the international community and the countries concerned needed to step up efforts to promote economic growth there. The rate of absolute poverty - people living on one dollar a day or less - in Sub-Saharan Africa is nearing 50 percent.
Southern African households burdened by an increasing number of AIDS orphans
By 2010 more than one in five children in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe will be orphaned by AIDS, a joint UN and US report warned. "Children on the Brink 2004" is the fourth edition of this biennial report, based on surveys conducted by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UNAIDS and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Alarmingly, the studies found that 20 percent of households with children in Southern Africa were taking care of one or more AIDS orphans.
* Children on the Brink report
http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_22212.html