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Effects of poverty in africa essay
Effects of poverty in africa essay
Effects of poverty in africa essay
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Despite its economic progress, Uganda is still one of the least developed countries in the world. From the latest report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Uganda has once again been listed among some of the least developed countries in the world. A per capita income of under US$170 makes Uganda today is one of the poorest countries in the world much like many of its neighboring African countries. It is a living testament today of the havoc caused by the political turmoil and economic decline brought about by insurmountable economic, political and social problems of the past several decades.
Uganda much like several of its neighboring countries was previously under colonial rule. This drastically altered the course of Uganda in terms of economics, politics and social problems. While under the rule of the British from 1888 to 1894, Ugandan life was essentially to serve and further the power of the British crown. However it wasn't simply the British that disrupted Ugandan life several other groups including Protestant and Catholic missionaries also served to alter the course of the landlocked country. Meaning essentially there was little progress on part of Uganda during this time to establish itself as a self-serving nation. This hindrance of self-sufficiency for several decades plays a significant part in why Uganda continues to struggle today. It wasn't until the 9th of October in 1962 that Uganda finally broke free from British rule.
This rule by the British can be said to have had a potentially major role on the Uganda we see today. Politically the Ugandan people truly had no say, although they weren't directly ruled by the crown their government was essentially a puppet government meant...
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...Uganda as well. The population of about 36 million is growing at an annual rate of 3.4% however HIV/AID's and malaria have impacted certain areas of Uganda making it difficult for them continue of the upwards path of development. The pandemic of HIV/AIDS specifically has caused the death of large numbers of young adults and orphaned up to 1.2 million children. While Malaria on the other hand shows in recent estimates that the disease kills at least 100,000 Ugandans a year, most of them being children under the age of five. However HIV/AIDS infection levels in Uganda have shown a slight decline over the past decade due a national campaign to control the spread of the virus. Whereas malaria still runs rampant even though it would be simple on part of the government to assist in alleviating the problem by spending more on mosquito nets and other preventative methods.
McKenna, The History of Central and Eastern Africa, pp 87-88; John A. Rowe, ‘Early Political Systems’, in Chapter 1 of Rita M. Byrnes (ed.), UGANDA, a country study, Federal Research Division - Library of Congress, (1990) (http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/ugtoc.html) (accessed 24 October, 2013).
Raffaele, Paul. "Uganda: The Horror." Smithsonian (Vol. 35, No. 11). Feb. 2005: 90-99. SIRS Issues
"Uganda - African Economic Outlook." African Economic Outlook - Measuring the Pulse of Africa. 06 Nov. 2011. Web. 12 Dec. 2011. .
Although the sub-Saharan region accounts for just 10% of the world’s population, 67% (22.5 million) of the 33.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS in 1998 were residents of one of the 34 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, and of all AIDS deaths since the epidemic started, 83% have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (Gilks, 1999, p. 180). Among children under age 15 living with HIV/AIDS, 90% live in sub-Saharan Africa as do 95% of all AIDS orphans. In several of the 34 sub-Saharan nations, 1 out of every 4 adults is HIV-positive (UNAIDS, 1998, p. 1). Taxing low-income countries with health care systems inadequate to handle the burden of non-AIDS related illnesses, AIDS has devastated many of the sub-Saharan African economies. The impact of AIDS on the region is such that it is now affecting demographics - changing mortality and fertility rates, reducing lifespan, and ultimately affecting population growth.
This system of government is organized at multiple levels, rather than at one centralized level like in direct rule. At the head of the decentralized government were indigenous people that acted under British command. This gave the illusion that African’s were in total power; however, they still remained inferior to the British in some areas. For example, the indigenous would be in charge of the day-today affairs within the colonies, but would lose power when it came to any external affairs, including taxation and forced labor. These Africans in power were not necessarily a major part of their societies pre-colonization. The British often gave power to people who often never held power previously and thereby created ethnic divisions within society. Instead of the end-goal being to “fix” the indigenous population to make them more European, in indirect rule, the colonial power used the natives as means to an end. Meaning that they would treat the Africans as tools and use them to further their business endeavors. The purpose of indirect rule was said to preserve the indigenous culture, however, it was less expensive than direct rule, and it allowed the British to maximize their colonial profits. Lord Lugard first experimented with indirect rule in Northern Nigeria with the Hausa-Fulani where it succeeded, but when he instilled that rule on other African states, it failed. In places like Nigeria where
...onditions in an inner-city or a rural community in the United States” (8). Most of the countries in Africa there are well over 50% of people below their poverty line. For an example, Lusted states, “In developing regions, extreme poverty is usually defined as earning less than $1.25 a day. In the United States, extreme poverty means earning less than half of the official poverty line” (10). But Africa isn’t the only country struggling with poor people. Poverty and Homelessness by Merino writes, “...3.7 percent in Denmark, 5 percent in Finland, 5.5 percent in Norway, 6.9 in Slovenia, 7 percent in Sweden, 7.2 percent [in] Hungary, 8.3 percent in Germany, 8.8 percent in the Czech Republic, 9.3 percent in France, 9.4 percent in Switzerland” (32). Poverty is a struggle all around the world and thousands of people die each day due to the lack of basic necessities to live.
The AIDS epidemic has reached disastrous proportions on the continent of Africa. Over the past two decades, two thirds of the more than 16 million people in the world infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, live in sub-Saharan Africa. It is now home to the largest number of people infected, with 70 percent of the world’s HIV-infected population. The problem with this ongoing human tragedy is that Africa is also the least equipped region in the world to cope with all the challenges posed by the HIV virus. In order to understand the social and economic consequences of the disease, it is important to study the relationship between poverty, the global response, and the effectiveness of AIDS prevention, both government and grassroots.
...g humanities survival as a whole. Treatment centers for curable diseases in Africa only promote dependency on foreign aid, how will these countries ever develop medical technology of their own if there is no need for it? Higher survival rates in children due to vaccinations also means more children are likely to survive until adulthood, which means they will also have children who will be born into the same rural jobless society their parents came from. This cycle can never be broken unless change is sought from within the country, not from others attempting to push the process along with funds. The simple fact is no matter how many schools or hospitals are built somewhere, unless the is a drastic change in the ideology of the people, those resources will continue to be mismanaged and the demographic transition from developing, to developed will never occur.
World Food Programme. (2013). Comprehensive food security and vulnerability analysis (CFSVA): Uganda. Retrieved from http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/ena/wfp256989.pdf
Those who 'discovered' Ugandan and the source of the Nile which the first explorers were seeking - men such as Speke and Stanley - and the soldiers and administrators who came after them undoubtedly believed in the superiority of European culture in a way which we today would consider unacceptably racist. Although they were impressed by the sophistication of Bugandan society, they implicitly assumed that Africa was more backward than Europe, that Africans would benefit from exposure to Western standards and practises, and of course from Christianity. To a degree this allowed them either to justify or even to suppress what now looks to be the crude reality that their underlying agenda was the extension of British influence, the promotion of British commerce, and the expansion of the British Empire, all without reference to the actual wishes of the Ugandan people. But then, even in Britain at thattime, democracy was a new idea and many people, including women, still did not have the vote.
The overriding challenge Uganda faces today is the curse of poverty. Poverty, ‘the lack of something”(“Poverty.”), something can be materials, knowledge, or anything one justifies as necessary to living. Associated with poverty is the question of what causes poverty and how to stop poverty? The poverty rate in Uganda has declined from the year 2002 from the year 2009, which shows the percent of residents living in poverty has decreasing. Yet, the year is 2014 and the poverty rate could have drastically changed over the course of five years. One could assume the poverty rate would continue to decrease, which would be astounding and beneficial, but does poverty ever decrease enough to an acceptable level or even nonexistence? Poverty is a complex issue that continues to puzzle people from all across the globe. Poverty could possible be a question that is never truly answered.
African nations regularly fall to the bottom of any list measuring economic activity, such as per capita income or per capita GDP, despite a wealth of natural resources. The bottom 25 spots of the United Nations (UN) quality of life index are regularly filled by African nations. In 2006, 34 of the 50 nations on the UN list of least developed countries are in Africa. In many nations, the per capita income is often less than $200 U.S. per year, with the vast majority of the population living on much less. In addition, Africa's share of income has been consistently dropping over the past century by any measure. In 1820, the average European worker earned about three times what the average African did. Now, the average European earns twenty times what the average African does. Although per capita incomes in Africa have also been steadily growing, and poverty falling, measures are still far better in other parts of the world, such as Latin America, which suffers from many of the same disadvantages that Africa has.
The country is one of the poorest in Africa. Gross domestic product per capita was US$464 in 2008, and Rwanda ranked 167th out of 182 countries in the 2009 United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index. Chad is also one of the world's poorest countries. In 2003, over 54 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line. For much of the population, health and social conditions are inadequate.
HIV does not only affect the well-being of individuals, it has large impacts on households, communities and even nations as a whole. Peer discussions and personal research has also made me realize that some of the countries suffering from this HIV epidemic also rather unfortunately suffer from other infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, relative poverty and economic stagnation. Despite these setbacks, new inte...
... diseases such as AIDS are also becoming a problem in places like Africa. Knowledge of how to prevent these diseases is not widely known, so an increasing number of people are infected. More attention needs to be placed on adequate health care and technology in these countries. While these third world societies may not have the resources with which to implement these changes, more advanced societies certainly do.