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May 23, 2017

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Report: Africans see rise in life quality

AFRICANS are seeing a steady improvement in the quality of their lives, with some countries even nearing world averages, according to a wide-ranging report on the continent’s future released yesterday.

While large portions of the continent’s 1.2 billion people live in poverty, many of Africa’s 54 nations have made significant progress in health, education and standard of living.

“At least a third of African countries have now achieved medium to high levels of human development,” said the report published by the African Development Bank, referring to a composite measure of a nation’s condition.

“North Africa has the highest levels, approaching the world average, but all sub-regions have seen steady improvement” since the turn of the 21st century, it added.

Despite the advances, some 544 million Africans still live in poverty, according to the report titled “African Economic Outlook 2017.”

Rwanda recorded the most progress, followed by Ghana and Liberia in the fight against poverty since 2005. One of Rwanda’s key efforts was a community-based health insurance system that by 2010 covered nearly 9 in 10 people.

At the same time, north African nations Egypt and Tunisia have health insurance systems that cover 78 percent and 100 percent, respectively, of their residents.

Spending on education, which is considered key for development, is above 6 percent of gross domestic product in South Africa, Ghana, Morocco, Mozambique and Tunisia. While Nigeria puts less than 1 percent of its GDP into schooling.

According to World Bank figures, European Union nations spent an average of 4.9 percent of GDP on education in 2013.

In central Africa, where school completion rates for girls are the lowest on the continent, the gap with boys is increasingly narrowing. Nearly three times as many girls finished secondary education in 2014 than a decade prior.

Gender equality is on the rise in several nations — including Botswana, Namibia, Rwanda — where women “achieve almost equal levels of human development as men,” the report said.

East Africa remains the continent’s economic powerhouse, driven in large part by Ethiopia. Overall, Africa remains the second most dynamic region in the world behind Asia.




 

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