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sub-Saharan African Countries (sub-saharan + african_country)
Selected AbstractsDrought Preparedness and Response in the Context of Sub-Saharan AfricaJOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2000Donald A. Wilhite Although drought is a normal, recurring feature of climate, little progress has been made in drought management in most parts of the world. A United Nations study of selected Sub-Saharan African countries revealed that most states have little experience in proactive planning for drought. Only Botswana and South Africa have made serious efforts to develop drought preparedness and response. The lack of contingency planning for drought events in the region results from limited financial resources, inadequate understanding of drought impacts, and poor co-ordination among government agencies. A ten-step planning process, originally developed in 1991 for U.S. states, is suggested as an organizational tool for Sub-Saharan countries to use in the development of drought plans. The process, which emphasizes risk management rather than crisis management, is based on three primary components: (1) monitoring and early warning, (2) vulnerability and impact assessment, (3) mitigation and response. The steps in the process are generic; they can be adapted and applied to the various settings of Sub-Saharan Africa. [source] Network of sexual contacts and sexually transmitted HIV infection in Burkina FasoJOURNAL OF MEDICAL VIROLOGY, Issue 6 2006Vito Latora Abstract Two thirds of the people who have been infected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the world live in Sub-Saharan African countries. The results of a study measuring the degree distribution of the network of sexual contacts in Burkina Faso are described. Such a network is responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and in particular of HIV. It has been found that the number of different sexual partners reported by males is a power law distribution with an exponent ,,=,2.9 (0.1). This is consistent with the degree distribution of scale-free networks. On the other hand, the females can be divided into two groups: the prostitutes with an average of 400 different partners per year, and females with a stable partner, having a rapidly decreasing degree distribution. Such a result may have important implications on the control of sexually transmitted diseases and in particular of HIV. Since scale-free networks have no epidemic threshold, a campaign based on prevention and anti-viral treatment of few highly connected nodes can be more successful than any policy based on enlarged but random distribution of the available anti-viral treatments. J. Med. Virol. 78:724,729, 2006. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] The Logic of African Neopatrimonialism: What Role for Donors?DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 5 2007Diana Cammack Today a number of sub-Saharan African countries display the outward signs of modern, democratic states. International aid agencies often treat them as though power and decision-making reside within government institutions and that they function as designed. When they do not they are labelled dysfunctional though their action is actually quite logical when viewed through a ,neopatrimonial lens'. This article outlines a number of neopatrimonial practices observed in Africa in the past two decades and attempts to explain the ,logic' that underpins them. It provides several recommendations about the way donors should assist states where deeply rooted anti-democratic and non-developmental behaviour dominates. [source] Potential impacts of climate change on Sub-Saharan African plant priority area selectionDIVERSITY AND DISTRIBUTIONS, Issue 6 2006Colin J. McClean ABSTRACT The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) aims to protect 50% of the most important areas for plant diversity by 2010. This study selects sets of 1-degree grid cells for 37 sub-Saharan African countries on the basis of a large database of plant species distributions. We use two reserve selection algorithms that attempt to satisfy two of the criteria set by the GSPC. The grid cells selected as important plant cells (IPCs) are compared between algorithms and in terms of country and continental rankings between cells. The conservation value of the selected grid cells are then considered in relation to their future species complement given the predicted climate change in three future periods (2025, 2055, and 2085). This analysis uses predicted climate suitability for individual species from a previous modelling exercise. We find that a country-by-country conservation approach is suitable for capturing most, but not all, continentally IPCs. The complementarity-based reserve selection algorithms suggest conservation of a similar set of grid cells, suggesting that areas of high plant diversity and rarity may be well protected by a single pattern of conservation activity. Although climatic conditions are predicted to deteriorate for many species under predicted climate change, the cells selected by the algorithms are less affected by climate change predictions than non-selected cells. For the plant species that maintain areas of climatic suitability in the future, the selected set will include cells with climate that is highly suitable for the species in the future. The selected cells are also predicted to conserve a large proportion of the species richness remaining across the continent under climate change, despite the network of cells being less optimal in terms of future predicted distributions. Limitations to the modelling are discussed in relation to the policy implications for those implementing the GSPC. [source] Expenditure Incidence in Africa: Microeconomic EvidenceFISCAL STUDIES, Issue 3 2000David E. Sahn Abstract In this paper, we examine the progressivity of social sector expenditures in eight sub-Saharan African countries. We employ dominance tests, complemented by extended Gini/concentration coefficients, to determine whether health and education expenditures redistribute resources to the poor. We find that social services are poorly targeted. Among the services examined, primary education tends to be most progressive and university education is least progressive. The benefits associated with hospital care are also less progressive than other health facilities. Our results also show that, while concentration curves are a useful way to summarise information on the distributional benefits of government expenditures, statistical testing of differences in curves is important. [source] Constraints to expanding access to health interventions: an empirical analysis and country typologyJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2003M. Kent Ranson This paper adopts three approaches to classifying countries by level of constraint, in order to inform the choice of strategies for expanding access to health interventions in different contexts. We find substantial heterogeneity across the 84 low-income and (all) sub-Saharan African countries analysed. Poor sub-Saharan African countries are the most highly constrained; Asian countries, in general, less constrained; and the two Asian giants, China and India, consistently fall above the median. Former Soviet Union countries rank low in terms of governance, but high for health systems variables. Only 10 per cent of the total population of the countries included lives in countries with the greatest constraints. The potential applications of the analysis are discussed, as are the limitations of the cross-sectional, macro level approach. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The Spread of Primary Schooling in sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for Fertility ChangePOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2000Cynthia B. Lloyd In 1980 Caldwell hypothesized that the time of the onset of the fertility transition in developing countries would be linked with the achievement of "mass formal schooling." This article applies Demographic and Health Survey data to assess schooling patterns and trends for 23 sub-Saharan African countries, using the percentage of 15,19-year olds who have completed at least four years of schooling as an indicator of progress in education. As background to that assessment, the article includes a review of the sparse literature on the links between children's schooling and fertility decline. The analysis strongly supports Caldwell's hypothesis with empirical evidence of the much stronger negative relationship between fertility decline and grade 4 attainment in those countries that have attained mass-schooling levels than in those that have not yet achieved such levels. [source] Geo-additive models of childhood undernutrition in three sub-Saharan African countriesPOPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 5 2009Ngianga-Bakwin Kandala Abstract We investigate the geographical and socioeconomic determinants of childhood undernutrition in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, three neighbouring countries in southern Africa, using the 1992 Demographic and Health Surveys. In particular, we estimate models of undernutrition jointly for the three countries to explore regional patterns of undernutrition that transcend boundaries, while allowing for country-specific interactions. We use geo-additive regression models to flexibly model the effects of selected socioeconomic covariates and spatial effects. Inference is fully Bayesian based on recent Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques. While the socioeconomic determinants generally confirm findings from the literature, we find distinct residual spatial patterns that are not explained by the socioeconomic determinants. In particular, there appears to be a belt transcending boundaries and running from southern Tanzania to northeastern Zambia which exhibits much worse undernutrition. These findings have important implications for planning, as well as in the search for left-out variables that might account for these residual spatial patterns. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Performance of colposcopy in five sub-Saharan African countriesBJOG : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OBSTETRICS & GYNAECOLOGY, Issue 6 2009R Muwonge Objective, The performance of colposcopy provided in a screening study in five African countries was evaluated. Design, Cross-sectional study. Setting, Burkina Faso, Congo Brazzaville, Guinea Conakry, Mali and Niger. Population, Women aged 25,59 years. Methods, A total of 29 294 women participated in a cervical screening study in the five study sites, and newly trained local doctors performed colposcopy and directed biopsies as indicated. Using meta-analytical tools, four measures of colposcopy performance at different thresholds of colposcopic abnormalities were assessed. Sources of heterogeneity were also assessed. Main outcome measures, Proportions of women receiving biopsies, adequate biopsies and women diagnosed with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). Results, Among 28 553 women with satisfactory colposcopy, 3101 had a colposcopic diagnosis of probable low-grade or worse lesions and 1128 probable high-grade or worse lesions. Overall, the measures that reached the set standards were proportion of biopsy taken at colposcopy threshold of probable high-grade or worse lesions (95%, 95% CI 90,100%) and proportion of adequate biopsy samples. The set standards were not met for the proportions of women diagnosed with CIN at different colposcopic abnormality thresholds. Detection of CIN2 or worse lesions increased with increasing colposcopic abnormality. Conclusions, The performance of colposcopy in some of the African sites studied was comparable to that previously observed in other studies. With appropriate training, monitoring, continuing practice and quality assurance, adequate standards of colposcopy can be attained in sub-Saharan Africa. [source] African Countries and the WTO's Dispute Settlement MechanismDEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2007Amin Alavi The WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism was designed, inter alia, to secure the ,rule of law' within international trade and provide all members with opportunities to exercise their rights under multilateral trade agreements. But, after ten years, no sub-Saharan African country has yet used the option to initiate a dispute. This article examines what prevents the WTO Africa Group from using the system and critically reviews the solutions they have proposed to remedy this. It concludes by discussing how this reflects broader problems concerning African participation in WTO, and puts forward some alternative proposals. [source] | ||||||||||||||||