The threat to development

The World Bank warned this week that HIV and AIDS represented the “foremost” threat to Africa and an “ominous threat” to the developing world as a whole. “Until the world has credibly addressed the epidemic we cannot regard anything else we do in development as secure,” Debrework Zwedie, the World Bank’s Global HIV/AIDS Coordinator said at the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban. Zwedie said that AIDS was costing the “typical” African country more than half a percent of per capita growth every year, and in severely affected countries such as those in southern Africa, the figure was far higher “possibly even reaching two percent per person per year”. “Considering that annual per capita growth in Africa has recently been 1.2 percent, this is a loss that Africa simply cannot afford,” Zwedie added. The World bank official said that one of the areas hardest hit was the education sector, where thousands of teachers are dying each year, and children are being forced out of school because they had lost one or more parent to the pandemic and could no longer afford the tuition fees. A study conducted in Guinea showed that for nearly 20 years, the number of pupils enrolling in school had been on the rise. In 1996 this increased to 36 percent and in 1997 to 40 percent. However, in recent years these achievements are being rolled back by HIV/AIDS with enrolment falling to pre-1996 levels. In Zambia, where UNAIDS estimates that nearly 20 percent of the adult population is HIV positive, a total of 1,300 teachers died of AIDS in 1998. Many of the hard-earned gains that African nations made in the first two decades of independence are being lost in just a few short years. The pandemic in Africa is also starting to have a devastating impact on the labour force. It is eroding productivity at a time when countries are being confronted by the challenge of globalisation. “In the public sector, it is depleting the already scarce supply of qualified managers and policy makers ... which is weakening the prospects for good governance,” Zwedie said.