A nation that has been in political turmoil since its independence from Portugal in 1975, Angola has had major concerns formulating a stable, unified country free of conflict. Despite it being Africa’s second-largest oil exporter and producer behind Nigeria, poverty has plagued the nation that has suffered internally due to political corruption, instability and other factors. So, why is Angola poor?
According to CountryWatch, income inequality remains high and poverty has been declining only slowly. Angola has attempted to mitigate poverty by placing strenuous efforts in the oil reserve industry in order to boost economic growth. Unfortunately, the income inequality gap is still wide, and infrastructure is in a volatile state due to the country’s insufficient skills that are needed to improve human development. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization that provides support for both developing and developed countries during periods of financial crisis, has warned Angola that they are vulnerable to stay trapped in such a cycle unless they allocate their resources appropriately.
According to a report by AllAfrica, Angola has successfully managed to reduce, by over half, the number of people underfed, thus achieving the first target of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals. Although it missed the original target by about two years, the current situation in the country is “satisfactory,” according to an official who was speaking on World Food Day, on October 16th, 2017.
An annual report, the Global Hunger Index, could encourage a more optimistic outlook on the country’s future, and could help citizens in answering questions like, “why is Angola Poor?” In the report, it states that hunger has fallen significantly in countries where civil wars have ended in the 1990s and 2000s, such as in Angola in 2002. Additionally, global hunger itself has fallen by 27 percent since 2000.
One of the more obvious explanations that could aim to clarify the poverty rate in Angola may be the lack of education that Angolans receive. According to the C.I.A. World Factbook, over 40 percent of Angolans live below the poverty line, with only 70 percent of them being literate.
People in Need (PiN), a Czech nonprofit focused on development projects, has stepped up in the campaign toward alleviating poverty by improving education for half a million children. With school expectancy hovering at around 10 years of age, and only 60 percent of females who are literate, such initiatives represent hope and prosperity for a country that ranks 146th on the Human Development Index.
PiN has contributed by building schools, engaging in specialized training for teachers and providing necessary teaching materials for students to receive a quality education while reducing illiteracy among adults. Its work has seen tremendous results, with over 450,000 Angolan children and 1,200 adults learning to read, write and do simple math.
Nevertheless, the advancements in the oil production sector should receive some credit, as it has drastically stimulated Angola’s economic growth and improved the standard of living for many. However, other social issues continue to persist in a country that only nine years ago held its first parliamentary election.
Accountability, transparency, focusing on human rights and deterring domestic violence are all setbacks that present peril to a nation striving to become a developed country. To answer the question, “why is Angola poor,” Angola must first make the necessary changes through strong governance programs in order to see positive results. Improved education can lead to reduced income inequality, but without stringent measures to allow for human capital to prosper efficiently, the people will continue to suffer from this vicious poverty cycle.
– Alexandre Dumouza
Photo: Flickr
Ben & Jerry’s Aid SeriousFun Children’s Network
This global charity community of 30 camps and programs serves children with serious illnesses, such as cancer, blood disorders, neurological disorders, cardiac disorders, genetic disorders and HIV.
Ben & Jerry’s Marshmallow Moon flavor itself is made up of vanilla ice cream with marshmallow and graham cracker swirls and fudge flakes. The delicious dessert is not the first of its kind, however, to go toward a philanthropic cause.
The launch of The Tonight Dough, Fallon’s initial flavor, raised over $1 million in support of SeriousFun Children’s Network. Commenting on the notable achievement, SeriousFun CEO Blake Maher was thrilled by the landmark milestone as a result of the relationship with Jimmy Fallon and Ben & Jerry’s. Maher commented, “They are both fantastic partners whose support helps ensure that we can provide transformative camp experiences to children living with many different types of serious illnesses all around the world, totally free of charge.”
SeriousFun Children’s Network is founded on the belief that all kids deserve to experience the joys of childhood, regardless of their health. All of its programs and facilities are specially adapted to meet the medical needs and different cultural backgrounds of campers, and state-of-the-art onsite medical expertise supports more than 50 different medical conditions.
Since being founded in 1988 by Paul Newman, 864,000 children and family members have been served, 132,000 children and family members have experienced camp and 221,000 individuals have contributed as volunteers. Originally based in Ashford, Connecticut, the SeriousFun Children’s network has continually expanded over the years.
The dedicated organization relies entirely on the support of caring donors, who make its mission of extending the SeriousFun experience to more and more children with serious illnesses possible. In 1994, a 500-acre estate in Ireland, courtesy of a generous donation from the government, became the first camp outside of the U.S.
In 2008, Newman’s global vision bloomed with the launch of the Global Partnership Program (GPP), providing culturally applicable programs that excite and empower children around the world.
Ultimately, it is remarkable to see how the buying and selling of a single product can be transformed into a life-changing experience for children around the world. Fallon’s collaboration with Ben & Jerry’s and SeriousFun Children’s Network is fostering the growth of youth, helping them to see beyond their medical limitations and live a life filled with unforgettably fun moments. Marshmellow Moon can be purchased through Ben & Jerry’s online store or at its scoop shops across the country.
– Mikaela Frigillana
Photo: Google
Education in the Ivory Coast: Challenges and Solutions
Water Quality in Benin: A West African Success Story
Home to almost 11 million people, the West African country of Benin has made great strides in improving access to clean water over the past three decades. The improved water quality in Benin is a leading example of how governments can work with foreign donors and local municipalities to increase water supply and quality to all citizens.
Beginning in the 1990s, the Beninese government expanded water coverage beyond the two largest cities to rural areas, decentralizing and adopting a strategy of responding to local demand in 1992. Rural water coverage in 2006 was at 53 percent and urban coverage at 78 percent, higher than the average for other African countries. Benin reached its 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of 76 percent access to improved drinking water nationwide.
New national water strategies announced in 2005, 2006 and 2007 devolved power over water and sanitation services to local municipalities. A national water utility named SONEB was established in 2007 to coordinate the water supply between the central government, international donors and local authorities.
These efforts attracted the support of foreign donors, with the World Bank pledging $68 million in 2016 to finance water and sanitation services in cities and small towns across Benin. The project will connect almost half a million people to the water network and improve sanitation for over 700,000, an important landmark in a country where water treatment is still severely underdeveloped.
Despite the success in expanding access, water quality in Benin requires further investments to bridge the gap between urban and rural communities. The World Bank project builds on a successful trial of public-private partnerships in three Beninese municipalities in 2014.
The Beninese government is now targeting the quality and treatment of drinking water. Wastewater treatment is not widely practiced in Benin, and authorities plan to establish a new regulatory agency to improve water hygiene and water services.
– Giacomo Tognini
Photo: Flickr
What is the Water Quality in Honduras Like?
However, Honduras’s above-average life expectancy is not necessarily a reliable indicator of superb living or health conditions in the country. A reported 84 percent of Honduras’s population have rural access to clean water, meaning that 16 percent of the country’s people do not.
This rate is higher than the global average of people who do not have access to clean water, which, as reported earlier this year, is 1 in 10 people. Despite the fact that this rate is less than double the global average, this statistic still means that 638,000 people in Honduras do not have access to safe water.
The lack of access to good water quality in Honduras demonstrates a divide between rural populations and the rest of the country’s people. This divide stems from the fact that people in rural communities often rely on small springs to obtain their water and this water is often contaminated and is not always reliable throughout every season.
Additionally, Honduras’s poverty is interfering with which groups of people in the country have access to clean drinking water. As the second poorest country in Central America, around 63 percent of Honduras’s population is reported to be living below the poverty line. Data on financial inclusion reports that families with lower incomes tend to not have as much access to improved water quality in Honduras because of their inability to afford it.
Organizations such as Water for People have been working to remedy the issue of water quality in Honduras, specifically aiming to help people in the country that need the most assistance, such as rural populations.
Water for People started its work in Honduras in 1997 and by 2006, only nine years later, the organization had aided over 90 rural communities in partnership with similar organizations. A year later, Water for People created a strategy specific to this region in order to better provide access to clean water for all of the different populations.
Though Honduras has a higher percentage of people without access to clean water when compared to the global average, the country has made significant progress in this area. Honduras met the Millennium Development Goal to reduce the number of people without access to sanitary water by half by the year 2015. Honduras was one of the only Latin American countries to meet this goal.
– Haley Rogers
Photo: Flickr
Big Four Causes of Poverty in Honduras
Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Central America, with an estimated 51.3% of the population living in poverty. Political and socioeconomic vulnerabilities have subjected many residents to food insecurity and violence, putting high-risk groups such as women, children and people living in rural areas in great danger of succumbing to extreme poverty.
Below are the four main causes of poverty in Honduras:
Hunger and Malnutrition
Honduras has a population of over ten million people, yet acute food insecurity affects an estimated 2.3 million of this number every year. Increasing levels of inequality, vulnerability to extreme weather conditions and a lack of access to vital resources have contributed to widespread hunger, especially for residents living in rural and indigenous areas. Chronic malnutrition also causes stunting in 23% of children and can be attributed to low nutrient density in available foods, the prevalence of early childbearing and poor child-feeding practices. Lacking nutrients of concern include zinc, vitamin B2, vitamin B6, niacin, folate and vitamin C.
Natural Disaster and Drought
Honduras is highly vulnerable to natural disasters. Hurricanes, heavy rain, flooding and frequent droughts often destroy crops and hinder agricultural production. Rural populations are especially dependent on agriculture as a source of livelihood and food security. The country’s economy also bases much of its revenue on agriculture, specifically key export crops such as sugarcane, bananas and coffee beans. In times of severe weather conditions or natural disasters, many vulnerable populations are often subject to large-scale crop devastation and significant infrastructure damage, which causes income loss and forced displacement.
High Unemployment
Honduras is heavily reliant upon remittances, which constitute approximately 29% of its GDP. Remittances allow the Honduran government to maintain hard currency reserves and provide families with the ability to afford food, education, health care and housing. However, the success of remittances has removed the government’s incentive to provide basic services to citizens, which has fueled migration and curbed economic growth. Without state intervention to provide better economic opportunities to residents, such as increased job opportunities, many are left to rely on an informal economy that only contributes to around 20% of the country’s GDP. Without the means to enter into a formal labor force, a growing number of Hondurans drawn by the attractiveness of remittances are migrating, often through illegal methods, which puts them at risk of being victims of criminal activity or becoming poor in other nations abroad.
Violence
Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, with a homicide rate of 38.34 as of 2021. The level of crime has cost the country an estimated 6.5% of its annual GDP. Pervasive violence in Honduras – which predominantly consists of theft, extortion, corruption and homicide – has historically dismantled neighborhoods and encouraged mass migration.
The prevalence of violence and homicide is largely related to drug trafficking and gang warfare. Crime and violence in Honduras have negatively impacted its economy, as resources that could be used to provide additional food security or a better educational system are instead allocated to counter criminal activity. Despite the government’s focus on combating crime, police investigative techniques and new citizen security policies have often proved to be ineffective, maintaining the high level of risk attributed to impoverished urban communities. This, in turn, perpetuates poverty in Honduras.
A Brighter Future: World Food Programme
While the causes of poverty in Honduras appear to be rooted in a variety of issues, many organizations such as the World Food Programme (WFP) have provided support and services to people in need by providing well-balanced meals to students and food to disaster-stricken populations. By working alongside the government, the WFP has supported the development of a national pathway for food systems transformation and has donated approximately $1.2 million to school-based programs to support better education. Along with other humanitarian groups, WFP has promoted the resilience of national systems linked to emergency preparedness and response, social protection and support for nutritionally vulnerable groups. These efforts, coupled with a greater sense of awareness, may serve to help to reduce poverty in Honduras.
– Sarah Jane Fraser, Moon Jung Kim
Photo: Flickr
5 Reasons to Donate Money, Not Stuff
– Nick Edinger
Photo: Pixabay
Shell and GravityLight Illuminate Off-Grid Regions in Kenya
In 2015, GravityLight’s inventive engineering earned it the Shell Springboard Award, a grant of nearly $200,000 used to fund innovative businesses with low carbon footprints. Together, Shell and the GravityLight Foundation have successfully put GravityLights into production and introduced them to 50 communities in Kenya.
Kenya, which has one of the largest economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, has expended considerable effort to create an impressive power sector. In just four years, Kenya has increased the amount of households with access to electricity from 25 percent to 46 percent. Kenyan companies such as KenGen are working to utilize renewable energy sources, and geothermal energy looks promising.
A capacity of approximately 2,295 MW is available on Kenya’s power grid. However, off the grid, in remote areas of the country, only 11.5 MW are currently available. The Shell and GravityLight partnership intends to provide electric light to those off-grid regions in Kenya.
Electricity is crucial to improving the lives of the world’s poor. Access to light alone improves education and the economy by allowing people to study and work after daylight hours. However, the resources required to produce light can be extremely expensive, especially for those living in poverty. The world’s poor spend an estimated 30 percent of their income on kerosene needed to burn in lamps. GravityLight eliminates the need for kerosene to produce light, which is not only cheaper but also safer. Kerosene fumes are known carcinogens that are toxic for both humans and the environment.
Because the GravityLight Foundation uses local people and businesses to organize the sale of its product, marketing for GravityLight supplies Kenyans with jobs. By providing employment, GravityLight is bringing bright futures as well as bright homes to off-grid regions in Kenya.
Shell and GravityLight are not the only groups seeking to improve energy accessibility in order to aid impoverished populations in Africa. In 2015, the same year GravityLight won the Springboard grant, the U.S. government passed the Electrify Africa Act. The act aims to provide 60 million households and businesses throughout Africa with electricity.
Around the globe, 1.2 billion people lack access to electricity. If GravityLight’s debut in Kenya is successful, the foundation plans to continue spreading light throughout the world.
– Mary Efird
Photo: Flickr
Why is Angola Poor?
According to CountryWatch, income inequality remains high and poverty has been declining only slowly. Angola has attempted to mitigate poverty by placing strenuous efforts in the oil reserve industry in order to boost economic growth. Unfortunately, the income inequality gap is still wide, and infrastructure is in a volatile state due to the country’s insufficient skills that are needed to improve human development. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization that provides support for both developing and developed countries during periods of financial crisis, has warned Angola that they are vulnerable to stay trapped in such a cycle unless they allocate their resources appropriately.
According to a report by AllAfrica, Angola has successfully managed to reduce, by over half, the number of people underfed, thus achieving the first target of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals. Although it missed the original target by about two years, the current situation in the country is “satisfactory,” according to an official who was speaking on World Food Day, on October 16th, 2017.
An annual report, the Global Hunger Index, could encourage a more optimistic outlook on the country’s future, and could help citizens in answering questions like, “why is Angola Poor?” In the report, it states that hunger has fallen significantly in countries where civil wars have ended in the 1990s and 2000s, such as in Angola in 2002. Additionally, global hunger itself has fallen by 27 percent since 2000.
One of the more obvious explanations that could aim to clarify the poverty rate in Angola may be the lack of education that Angolans receive. According to the C.I.A. World Factbook, over 40 percent of Angolans live below the poverty line, with only 70 percent of them being literate.
People in Need (PiN), a Czech nonprofit focused on development projects, has stepped up in the campaign toward alleviating poverty by improving education for half a million children. With school expectancy hovering at around 10 years of age, and only 60 percent of females who are literate, such initiatives represent hope and prosperity for a country that ranks 146th on the Human Development Index.
PiN has contributed by building schools, engaging in specialized training for teachers and providing necessary teaching materials for students to receive a quality education while reducing illiteracy among adults. Its work has seen tremendous results, with over 450,000 Angolan children and 1,200 adults learning to read, write and do simple math.
Nevertheless, the advancements in the oil production sector should receive some credit, as it has drastically stimulated Angola’s economic growth and improved the standard of living for many. However, other social issues continue to persist in a country that only nine years ago held its first parliamentary election.
Accountability, transparency, focusing on human rights and deterring domestic violence are all setbacks that present peril to a nation striving to become a developed country. To answer the question, “why is Angola poor,” Angola must first make the necessary changes through strong governance programs in order to see positive results. Improved education can lead to reduced income inequality, but without stringent measures to allow for human capital to prosper efficiently, the people will continue to suffer from this vicious poverty cycle.
– Alexandre Dumouza
Photo: Flickr
The Decision of Whether to Abandon the Iran Nuclear Deal
Put into effect in 2015 during the Obama administration, the 100-page Iran deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, mandates Iran to cease nuclear development for the next decade and seeks to take apart nuclear sites in the country. In exchange, Iran will receive sanctions relief on a gradual basis as they follow the agreement. Some of the terms of the agreement include removing two-thirds of Iran’s 19,000 centrifuges and the destruction of Iran’s stockpile of uranium.
According to U.S. officials, European allies and the United Nations, Iran has been following the deal. For the Trump administration, this is not good enough. While not violating any terms in the agreement, Iran has reportedly been testing ballistic missiles and supporting militant groups in Syria and Yemen.
During an interview with Fox News, President Trump stated that the deal was done “out of weakness, when actually we had great strength.” The administration is looking to strengthen the provisions of the deal or back out of it entirely.
For those who support the deal, much of the concern lies with their belief that dropping out of it will hurt the United States’ global governance and influence. In an interview with Kasie Hunt on MSNBC, Senator Al Franken said that with European allies, Russia and China having no intentions of abandoning the Iran deal. It would only isolate the United States and “undercut” our leadership in the world.
“If the United States desires to keep nuclear weapons out of Iran, I say they should remain,” said Desiree Hendrix, a political science graduate from the University of Delaware. Hendrix also believes that leaving the Iran deal could jeopardize the United States’ global influence because of its status as being part of the big five in the U.N., and the U.S. would not be able to just assume further alliances with Europe due to its current fragile state.
The House of Representatives will vote on whether the United States will remain in the Iran nuclear deal next week.
– Blake Chambers
Photo: Google
Improving Education in Sao Tome and Principe