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Executive summary
Despite Africa's encouraging economic outlook in recent years, millions of children still struggle on the margins of survival in the continent. Children account for a large percentage of the income-poor worldwide and the severely deprived. It is much more so in developing countries including Africa. At least 600 million children under the age of 18 are surviving on less than $1 a day worldwide; 40 per cent of these children live in developing countries.
Child poverty is worsened by the increasing impoverishment of households. As of 2005, 43 per cent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa lived below US$ 1 a day. Three quarters of the world's ultra poor (122 million) live in sub-Saharan Africa.
There is also a rise in inequality in many countries in the continent with national wealth accumulation having very little effect in lifting the majority of the people out of poverty. Inequalities are not only high between regions and between countries but also within countries between rural and urban areas. For instance, children born in rural sub-Saharan Africa face nearly twice as much risk of being severely deprived and have more than three times the risk of being multiply severely deprived than those born in towns.
One of the surprising facts in the discussion of child poverty in Africa is the paradox evident in some countries of deprivation in the midst of the abundance of minerals especially oil ad diamonds. Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria show case this paradox. For instance, Angola, which is the third largest oil producer in Africa and the fifth largest diamond producer in the world had the second highest under-five mortality rate in the world in 2006 - after Sierra Leone.
The costs of poverty on children are enormous. Child poverty is strongly associated with less schooling and lower educational attainment, with long-term effects on future productive capacity and standard of living.
Children who are poor are more likely to die or fall sick than their rich counterparts. Child poverty carries with it the sharp sting of intergenerational perpetuation of poverty mainly through the vehicle of educational deprivation. There is also a strong correlation between child poverty and malnutrition and stunting.
Mainly as a consequence of household poverty, there are about 80 million child workers across Africa employed in domestic work, as commercial sex workers and for work in commercial agriculture and plantations and in mining. In addition to low pay, long working hours, loss of educational opportunities and physical and sexual abuse are the brutal realties of the daily lives of child labourers and child slaves. Child labourers also suffer physical harm that include increased risk of accidents, assault, violent theft, risk of illness from poor hygiene and exposure to bad weather and chemicals.
The HIVj AIDS pandemic, armed conflicts and population pressure are fuelling the problem of child poverty in Africa. HIVj AIDS has had a severe impact on household poverty by killing breadwinners, increasing dependency ratios, orphaning millions of children, dramatically increasing HIVj AIDS-related expenses, rapidly depleting assets, and diverting crucial resources from sustainable investments in household food security.
There is a symbiotic relationship between poverty and armed conflicts. Armed conflicts have impacted heavily on poverty reduction efforts in the continent, while at the same time poverty has fuelled conflicts. Poorer countries are more likely than richer countries to engage in civil war, and countries that experience civil war tend to become and/or remain poor.
Even in a situation where HIV/ AIDS and armed conflicts are killing off a chunk of the working age population, the number of people living in Africa has continued to grow enormously. The result is that there are more mouths to feed and less land on which to grow the food. Dependency ratios have, unlike in all other regions of the world, correspondingly risen. Whereas most areas' working age (15-64-year-old) population makes up 60 percent of the total, only 33 percent of the people in sub-Saharan are in this age group.
Due to climate change, long spells of drought, increased demand for food, slow-growing supply, changing consumption patterns in major developing countries like China and the planting of crops for bio fuel, the world is in the midst of an unprecedented food crisis. Africa is one of the continents hard hit by this situation.
In the midst of all this sorry state of affairs, it is heartening to learn that the African people are slowly extricating themselves from the intertwined problems of conflict, poverty, hunger and illiteracy. Improved governance and increased investments in key social sectors have created an unprecedented sense of optimism. Thanks to the continued growth of responsible and representative governments and the recovery from several lengthy conflicts, much of Africa has seen robust economic growth in recent years. There is a growing commitment among political leaders from the regional to the national levels. Thus by building on this hard-won momentum, it is incumbent upon all of us stakeholders to take appropriate policy and programmatic steps to tackle child poverty.
We must first of all state that our knowledge of the problems and policy experience is limited. Also, the problem of child poverty is complex, intertwined as it is with a large number of social, economic and structural factors. Policy identification is therefore a particularly difficult task in this area. We therefore need humility and it is in this context that we propose the following eight points to tackle child poverty.
Recognise child poverty: We must begin by recognising the problem. We must appreciate the fact that poverty affects children differently from adults hence the use of the term child poverty as a powerful rhetorical term serves as a good organising concept for improving wider child well-being. The term is child focused and emphasises that children have rights and are more than only prospective adults.
Count the cost of poverty: Poverty is expensive, mostly to the children it disadvantages but also to the countries which lose the talent. When a country invests US$1 in giving children a good start in life, it saves US$7 in costs for health and other problems that arise when kids' basic needs are not met. Those building the case for tackling poverty should quantify its impact on impaired economic growth and the service costs it brings. Evidence of the societal costs is a powerful tool to generate national and international interest in investing to tackle child poverty.
Push for pro-poor economic growth: It is often assumed rising GDP (where it is rising) will solve child poverty; this is not automatically the case. In fact, rising GDP in many African countries has resulted in rising inequality, which resulted in bigger gaps in society and proved to be an impediment to the improvement of access to basic amenities of life and equal access to opportunities in society including decent jobs. The average rate of unemployment for 2003 was estimated at 10.9 per cent for sub-Saharan Africa and 10.4 per cent for North Africa, higher than most other developing regions. Estimates show that reducing the level of inequality in each region in the world by one standard deviation is enough to more than halve poverty in SubSaharan Africa and almost halve poverty in Latin America. It is thus incumbent among countries with high inequalities to administer effective policies that help redress the inequalities. One important instrument is the accelerated creation of jobs and the introduction of policy mechanisms that link economic growth with employment.
Develop social security - introduce child benefit: A key tool to directly address children's conditions is social transfers. Social security is common in higher and middle income countries as a way of supporting vulnerable children and families. Progressive policies here should redistribute payments targeted at children, either in cash or kind, through mothers and on a regular, weekly or monthly, basis can have a direct impact to reduce extreme poverty. Payments could be used both to support child involvement in education, to improve nutrition and protect children from child labour.
Save children's lives and improve their livelihoods: Developing better health facilities and improving maternal health by reducing poverty and improving nutrition (for instance with food supplements) also offer practical steps to improving both maternal and child survival. Allowing free universal access to basic primary health care services is a critical step that allows the poor to benefit from these services.
As a matter of critical health priority, countries have to take urgent steps to ensure free universal access to a nti-retroviraI treatment to prolong the lives of children and parents and prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child. Beyond the political rhetoric, governments as well as international bodies have to take concrete steps to address the current food crisis that is taking a huge toll on Africans even as we speak. Better access to toilets, cleaner water and adequate shelter can make a substar.tial improvement to child survival. Equally importantly, providing education of adequate quality and ensuring that the factors that disrupt children's schooling are minimized are measures required in this regard.
Maximise mothers' labour market participation and economic freedom: The role of mothers is an important element in tackling child poverty (and in promoting their own financial independence and protection from poverty). The continued barriers and disadvantaged labour market position that they continue to face mean that any anti-poverty strategy that relies on paid work as the main route out of poverty has to be an explicitly gendered strategy.
Narrow the gaps of the information age: Access to information is increasingly important in developing human capital - helping citizens to access opportunities and participate in society. Yet 39 per cent of children in sub-Saharan Africa don't have access to television, radio, telephone or newspapers. Education and literacy are at the heart of helping children participate in the information age, policies also need to address access to resources such as newspapers, radios and Internet access which become increasingly important.
Get more reliable data and look for what works (and doesn't): Data and information influences, policy, so having good information is a crucial adjunct to policy development, as is good access to relevant evidence of what works. Thus, undertaking a continuous monitoring and research on the situation of children in a manner that is informative of policy making, advocacy and programme development is an imperative of all relevant stakeholders.
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