GUMISAI MUTUME, Washington DC | Friday
CIVIL wars have blunted and reversed economic growth prospects in a number of African countries at a time when foreign aid to the continent has been shrinking, the World Bank says.
In a new report featuring key African social and economic data for the period 1990-99 released, the Bank notes that while the trend in many African countries during the 1990s was of slow but steady growth, those in armed conflict regressed.
During the 1990s Angola averaged – 0.2% negative growth, Burundi -2.4%, and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone -4.6%.
Africans living in countries beset by conflict were also more likely to have shorter life expectancy at birth and have higher infant mortality rates than other more stable countries, notes African Development Indicators, a report released annually.
Sierra Leone has been the venue of a long brutal civil war and it holds the unenviable record of having the region’s lowest life expectancy at just 37 years. It also boasts the region’s highest infant mortality rate at 169 deaths per thousand.
The report, which is a compilation of economic indicators on trade, external debt investment and aid flows, also notes a significant drop in foreign direct investment into sub-Saharan Africa since 1990.
Official aid to the region fell from $32 per person in 1990 to only $19 per person in 1998. Levels of aid reached their peak in Africa in 1992 when they stood at nearly $18bn. By last year they had fallen to $11bn.
Yet these cutbacks came at a time when aid was becoming effective in Africa the Bank notes.
During the 1990s, aid to Africa became more focused on poor countries with reasonable policies, and as a result it became more effective in reducing poverty, but this message did not get through to OECD electorates, says Paul Collier, research director in the Bank’s Development Economics Department.
The bulk of Africas foreign assistance comes from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development – a grouping of about 30 of the world’s free market economies.
”OECD governments were cutting aid budgets to Africa during precisely the period when it started to work really well,” says Collier.
‘Millions of Africans are in poverty today partly because of these cuts, which occurred at a time of unprecedented OECD prosperity. – African Eye News Service
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