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Southern Africa |
SOCIAL ACTION
Living long, meaningful and healthy lives.
But just how is Africa faring?
A SADC report examines the situation in Southern Africa
Adult literacy and gender empowerment in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) increased in the last century, and infant mortality rate and poverty dropped, according to the 2000 SADC Human Development Report. Between 1970 and 1995, adult literacy rose from 48 per cent to 71 per cent due to increased school enrolment at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. The gross combined enrolment ratio in the three categories jumped from 38 per cent to 51.8 per cent between 1980 and 1995, though the average SADC literacy rate was down to 67.32 per cent by 1998.
The Report, entitled: «Challenges and Opportunities for Regional Integration», says improvements in women‘s economic and political participation and decision-making, accounted for more women getting into parliament in the region. South Africa, Mozambique and the Seychelles are singled out as countries where the number of women legislators particularly rose, placing these three nations among the world’s top ten countries leading in women parliamentary representation.
At 17 per cent, the SADC average for female representation in parliament is higher than that of most regional groupings in Africa. «The increases in the representation of women in political and decision-making positions following elections in five SADC countries in 1999 and 2000, shows that the Plan of Action for Gender of 1998 is starting to bear fruit,» the Report says.
The 14 SADC member-states have targeted to reach an average of 30 per cent women’s presence in parliament by 2005. However, the Report reveals that although most SADC members have committed themselves towards this goal, half still fall below 15 per cent level. Swaziland and Mauritius rank among the lowest in terms of women’s parliamentary representation at seven per cent and 5.9 per cent, respectively.
Poverty
The number of people living in absolute poverty in the region, dropped from two-thirds in the mid 1990s to one-third by 1998. The decline was due to increased economic growth towards the end of the 1990s, averaging 2.6 per cent between 1995 and 1998.
But, the Report adds, in the absence of a redistribution of growth in favour of the poor, this economic growth rate was inadequate to prevent a significant increase in income poverty. Formal employment rate, estimated at 2.2 per cent between 1991 and 1998, remained low, and has recently lagged behind the annual labour force growth rate of 2.4 per cent.
Currently, the SADC has a regional unemployment rate of between 30-40 per cent. The region has one of the world’s most unequal distributions of wealth. Namibia is one of the countries with a highly skewed income distribution, based on class and race, with a national per capita income of US $2,000 — far higher than the SADC average of US $1,892.
The decisive fall in the infant mortality rate during the period 1970 to 1998, is attributed to improvements in the general health and nutrition of the population and in the education of women. However, in countries such as Angola, Congo RDC, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia, infant mortality increased or remained high largely because of rising poverty and armed conflict.
The Report defines human development as «a process of expanding people’s choices by enabling them to live long, healthy and creative lives.» This is measured by the use of the Human Development Index (HDI), a standard scale of measuring levels of poverty. Introduced in 1990, the HDI is calculated by looking at the number of people in each country who are affected by deprivation in survival (life expectancy), knowledge (education) and economic provision (living standards). The scale is graded in low, medium and high ranges. Each country is given points according to the performance in each of the three components, namely — education, living standards and life expectancy.
Countries with low human development have an HDI lower than 0.500; medium countries have an HDI of between 0.500 and 0.799 while high development countries have an index equal to or above 0.800.
Following this categorisation, the Seychelles falls in the high HDI group, while Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Lesotho are in the medium HDI bracket. Generally, these eight countries appear to have relative political stability, strong economic reforms, relatively strong local governance institutions and a growing private sector-led market.
These factors were apparently missing in countries with low HDI, namely Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Congo RDC, Angola and Mozambique.
Major challenges
Despite the successes scored by the SADC, the Report warns that the region still faces specifically six major challenges, some transitory and short-term, others structural and long-term that will take a long time to solve. The challenges are:
For the SADC to translate these opportunities into benefits, it needs to replace shallow integration with deep integration.
«Shallow integration refers to eliminating border restrictions such as tariff and quotas leaving internal barriers intact. Deep integration refers to eliminating both border restrictions and constraints that operate within countries,» the Report says, concluding that the greatest challenge towards achieving fuller regional integration is the lack of capacity to develop political consensus among SADC member states.
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