Archive for category: Global Poverty

Key articles and information on global poverty.

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Education in Rwanda: Highest Enrollment Rates in Africa

Rwanda EducationRwanda’s elementary school enrollment rate is the highest in Africa. It stands as an example for other countries in the continent as the female enrollment rate of 98 percent has surpassed that of the male enrollment rate of 95 percent in primary school.

The Rwandan elementary educational system has brought the primary completion rate to 72.7 percent in 2012. The completion rate was at 53 percent only four years prior.

There has been an increase in the national budget for education in Rwanda for the 2017-18 year. The budget was 17 percent in 2012 and is projected to rise to 22 percent. This funding will help provide Rwandan students with the opportunity to further their studies.

Rwanda was awarded the Commonwealth Education Good Practice Award in 2012 for its education program. The program is called the Nine Year Basic Education Fast Track Strategies and was designed to provide access to nine years of education for Rwandans. The community-based curriculum emphasizes quality education and community-incorporation.

Classrooms and restrooms have been built in accordance to the program. The program was initiated in 2009 and the success of the program is evident in the increase in enrollment, retention, and completion rates of primary school.

Although Rwanda’s primary school enrollment rates are high, the numbers show that a much smaller percentage of primary school children are continuing on to secondary education. The net enrollment rate for secondary school is 33 percent from 2013. This number does show a slow but steady increase of 3 percent from 2010 when the enrollment rate was at 30 percent.

Rwanda’s prioritization of the education of the youth is shown through the increase in enrollment rates throughout the country. Hopefully, other African countries will be quick to follow Rwanda’s lead.

– Iona Brannon

Sources: Commonwealth, Global Partnership, UNICEF, US Embassy, World Bank
Photo: Living in KiGali

Can Hydropower Alleviate Energy Poverty in Africa?

Hydropower
The World Energy Council (WEC) estimates that only a third of the world’s potential hydropower capacity has been developed.

With this knowledge in mind, an endless expansion of possibilities awaits for future investments in this renewable energy.

In fact, today hydropower is recognized as the cleanest renewable source in the world — the carbon emissions emitted from its lifecycle of construction, operation and decommission are far less in comparison to its renewable friends, wind and solar.

According to an article by SciDev Net, Africa is the world’s fastest growing economy; however, despite the foreseeable opportunities for this emerging continent, millions of people remain in severe poverty.

At the heart of this issue lies energy poverty, with 600 million Africans living without electricity, according to the International Energy Agency (IAE).

This means that more than half of the country’s population lacks access to electricity, rural residents faring worse with just 27.8 percent having access to electricity — what many count today as something they cannot live without.

Despite these harrowing numbers, hydropower use accounts for 84 percent of all non-fossil fuel energy use across Africa, a continent rich in rivers and lakes, making it ripe for this type of energy source.

Among the world’s longest waterways, The Nile is shared by many neighboring countries and offers great potential for hydropower in Africa.

Recognizing this potential, the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is underway, a structure which will be 145 meters high and its completion planned for 2017. With this height, it will be nearly one and a half times the height of the Victoria Falls and also the largest dam in Africa.

The creation of this dam will benefit many, producing almost triple the amount of Ethiopia’s current electricity production, as the dam is capable of producing six gigawatts of energy in peak output.

Dams harnessing and producing hydropower typically last 50 years without maintenance, producing limitless and continuous power, unlike other sources which are not as dependable.

However, some negative aspects of hydropower include the high costs associated with design and construction and the uncertain impact it will have on local people who call the site of the dam their home.

Although the construction and usage of hydropower “come with a complex set of social and environment challenges,” international hydropower associates are in the process of creating sustainability standards to develop and ensure Africa’s place in a world looking toward hydropower.

Future plans for the implementation of hydropower along Africa’s waterways include the Congo, Niger, Orange and Senegal Rivers, which when combined will have the potential to generate nearly 27 gigawatts of electricity.

As Africa continues to invest in renewable energy sources such as hydropower, an end to energy poverty is possible.

As SciDevNet reveals, “The next few decades could prove critical to the future of Africa’s water, energy and people.”

– Nikki Schaffer

Sources: SciDev, World Energy, World Energy Outlook
Photo: Wikipedia

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6 Reasons Breadfruit Can Solve World Hunger

Breadfruit Could Solve World Hunger
What is breadfruit? Although it sounds fictitious, it is actually a real food with the potential to contribute to the eradication of world hunger.

Breadfruit is shaped like a football and has a prickly texture. The fruit grows on trees and is highly nutritious. It is not well known because many people find it bland and tasteless.

However, there are 6 reasons why food critics should stop turning up their noses at this fruit and they all pertain to helping starving people.

  1. Breadfruit is native to the Pacific Islands and grows best in sunny and humid climates. About 80 percent of the world’s hungry live in tropical and subtropical regions. Because these regions are best for these trees, the fruit has the potential to feed thousands of hungry people.
  2. Breadfruit trees grow easily and begin to bear fruit within three to five years. They are not high maintenance and continue to produce fruit for decades. On average, larger trees can produce between 400-600 fruits while smaller trees can produce approximately 100 fruits.
  3. Breadfruit is nutritious. It is high in fiber, carbohydrates, calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, potassium, thiamine, and niacin.
  4. Breadfruit can be prepared in a variety of ways including fried, frozen, fermented, pickled, boiled, baked, and roasted. It can also be ground into flour.
  5. Currently, there are pilot projects working to distribute the fruit to places in need such as Honduras and the Caribbean. The Breadfruit Institute in Hawaii is a member of the Alliance to End Hunger. With their hard work and the work of other organizations such as Trees That Feed Foundation, breadfruit has fed people in Jamaica, Kenya, and Haiti.
  6. There are many fans advocating for the fruit. Olelo pa’a Faith Ogawa, a private chef says, “I feel it’s the food of the future. If I were to speak to the breadfruit spirit, it would tell me: ‘Grow me! Eat me! It can feed villages!’”

– Kelsey Parrotte

Sources: Business Insider, National Tropical Botanical Garden, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post

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Malala Yousafzai: Fighting for Global Education

Malala Yousafzai

In 2012, 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot three times by the Taliban because she was fighting for her right to attend school. Three years later, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner is creating a social movement through her activism regarding global education.

Now 18 years old, Yousafzai has called on the United States and other leading powers to devote more of their foreign policy to educational opportunities for needy children around the world.

“World leaders…are only focusing on six years of education, or nine years,” she said at a panel event co-hosted by Foreign Policy, Vital Voices, and the Malala Fund at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. “This is not how we are going to achieve success in our future. It is necessary we provide 12 years of quality education to every child.”

Around the world, 57 million children of primary school age do not attend school, with half of these children living in sub-Saharan Africa. Out of these children, 54 percent who do not attend primary school are girls.

Yousafzai argues that leading world powers spend too much on their military forces and should promote, “Books, not bullets. Books, not bombs.”

According to the U.S. Department of Defense archives, $663 billion of the U.S. budget goes towards the military while a mere 0.1 percent is used for foreign aid, including global education.

As Yousafzai continues her global activism and promotion of the Malala Fund, the Nobel Peace Prize winner is finishing her high school education in England because she is afraid the Taliban will kill her if she tries returning to Pakistan.

While finishing school is her top priority, the activist also has a documentary being released on October 2. The documentary “He Named Me Malala” will follow Yousafzai’s life as she completes schoolwork, visits schoolgirls in Nigeria, and viewers will even have the opportunity to see the aftermath of the gunshot injuries as she undergoes surgery and physical therapy.

“I made a choice not to tell the global political story,” said film director Davis Guggenheim during the Q&A after the Telluride Film Festival screening. “As a father of two daughters, I wanted to tell the story of… why did this amazing girl happen?”

As the documentary’s release date to the public approaches, there are high hopes that the film will start a conversation and make a lasting impact on the current state of global education.

– Alexandra Korman

Sources: BMZ, Fast Coexist, Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times

Photo: Flickr

 

Anti-Poverty Efforts: Integrate Targeted Communities

Anti_Poverty_efforts
President Barack Obama visited Kenya and Ethiopia earlier this summer to draw global attention to challenges facing development organizations throughout Africa, including establishing more widespread access to electricity.

While those large-scale initiatives are important in providing poor regions with economic opportunity, another initiative, equally important, went largely uncovered: community-based development.

Community-based (or “community-driven”) development is defined by Rural Poverty Portal as “a way to manage development, including the design and implementation of policies and projects, [which] facilitates access by poor rural people to social, human, and physical capital.”

Strategies used by community-based organizations include enabling targeted communities to design their own anti-poverty policies, establishing the means for good long-term governance, and prioritizing the impact of public expenditures from the “bottom of the pyramid” up.

Wayne Firestone, CEO of International Lifeline Fund, points to the malaria epidemic in northern Uganda as a phenomenon that could benefit from the inclusion of local communities.

Previous top-down health initiatives, such as indoor residual spraying interventions, he said, have lowered the immunity of residents, made them complacent in taking preventative measures, and have generally made communities more vulnerable to the disease.

Such initiatives would become more effective if they included local communities in “the design, implementation and maintenance of solutions.”

While local communities have voiced their desire to become more involved in decision-making processes, their national governments have started to endorse that sentiment on a global level.

One of the primary takeaways from the Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa earlier this year was that developing countries want to take “greater ownership” over their development through domestic resource mobilization (DRM), a process in which countries raise and allocate their own development funding.

USAID associate administrator Eric Postel notes that while DRM has historically been overlooked in global anti-poverty efforts, the international community has begun to realize its importance for countries hoping to escape poverty.

“DRM is hardly a new concept, but one that has unfortunately been out of the spotlight for many years. I remember attending the aid effectiveness conference in Busan, South Korea, in 2011.

Support for DRM was barely discussed there,” he wrote in an article for Devex. “Since then, the global community has coalesced around the importance of this transitional bridge from a nation’s receiving international aid assistance to its sustainable providing for its own.”

While some developing countries may never realize absolute autonomy in directing their own anti-poverty initiatives, DRM is a positive step for countries hoping to become more self-reliant. Earlier this year, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta made an appeal to African countries to stop accepting international aid entirely.

Although certainly not in the best interest of many African civilians, that position reflects the common and natural desire among poor countries to achieve sustainability and self-determination.

Indeed, the lack of cohesion among rural communities like those in northern Uganda can make community-based development difficult, primarily because it takes time to establish functioning bodies vested with the ability to prioritize community needs.

According to Firestone, however, development assistance ought to be rethought in ways that will enable communities to participate in the management of their own affairs.

“For decades, development assistance has created a culture in which these communities are recipients, not leaders of their own solutions,” he said.

“Many development thinkers have started conversations around how we can shift that culture to make sustainable progress; how residents of poor, rural communities can be problem solvers rather than problems, and can embrace changes they generate internally.”

– Zach VeShancey

Sources: Devex 1, Devex 2, Rural Poverty Portal
Photo: Flickr

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NeoVent Reaches Babies in the Developing World

Developing World's Babies Can Now Breathe Easier
In rural parts of the developing world, health care is iffy at best. If there is a healthcare facility, it often lacks trained employees and equipment. The equipment may even be outdated due to the expense to update it. And, too often, people traveling to a healthcare facility die in their travels.

This is the case seen in newborns when they are born in a rural village and must make the voyage to the nearest healthcare facility. It is very common for premature newborns to have difficulty breathing.

“Hospitals supply continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) to keep the lungs ‘open’ as the baby breathes on its own. However, very premature babies who cannot breathe on their own require dual pressure treatment along with CPAP to provide both negative and positive pressure to the lungs at a normal breathing frequency.”

In first world countries, this is an easy fix because they are usually born at a hospital with the necessary equipment. However, this is not true in the rural parts of the developing world. Babies that need treatment for underdeveloped lungs do not have access to the dual pressure treatment system because the equipment is expensive, difficult to operate, or hard to upkeep.

According to the World Health Organization, the mortality rate of premature infants in underdeveloped countries can be up to eight times higher than in the U.S., due to lack of resources. But there is hope for the newborn babies of the developing world.

Stephen John and Joseph Barnett, two engineering students at Western Michigan University (WMU), invented the NeoVent. This device is an easy-to-operate dual-pressure system that is aimed at helping premature babies breathe.

“The NeoVent consists of an innovative oscillatory relief valve, and is driven by excess air generated by the CPAP machine. Air at a constant pressure is transported from the CPAP machines into the child’s airway via a tube. The tube is submerged into water to produce bubbles, which are caught in a small inverted bowl on the relief valve.”

As this tube fills bubbles, a positive pressure is applied to the infant’s lungs, bringing in air. And as the bubbles disperse, a negative pressure is applied to the infant’s lungs, pulling air out of the lungs. This is seen as a breathing motion on the infant’s chest.

By keeping the developing world in mind, John and Barnett have priced the machine at a mere $25. The engineering students plan to implement the NeoVent in limited resource facilities in Nepal, Kenya and Uganda.

John and Barnett received $3,500 as U.S. winners of the 2015 James Dyson Award. The students plan to use this money to start clinical trials and manufacture a second round of production level devices.

The NeoVent also won the Lemelson-MIT undergraduate “Cure It” competition and the Brian Thomas Entrepreneurial competition at Western Michigan University. In addition to these awards, NeoVent is also the recipient of a VentureWell E-teams grants and a research grant from WMU’s honors college.

NeoVent maybe not look like the expensive technology in state of the art hospitals, but it functions just the same. By creating an effective and affordable device, John and Barnett will be saving many premature infants’ lives in the developing world.

– Kerri Szulak

Sources: Machine Design, WMU News
Photo: Flickr

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USAID Sets New Goals for Maternal Health

maternal health
The United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, is a government organization in charge of allocating funds and aid to global issues.

Millions around the globe have felt such power and emotion in the form of kisses, hugs, listening ears, and countless late nights.

However, maternal and child survival continues to be among the key issues that feed into the poverty crisis in developing countries around the world.

According to the UN, “a woman dies from complications in childbirth every minute – about 529,000 each year – the vast majority of them in developing countries.”

As part of the Millennium Development Goals, which concluded earlier this year in 2015, several countries banded together in order to increase maternal and child survival by three-quarters. While the target was not met, significant progress was made and millions of lives were saved in countries that normally do not receive the care and resources required for a healthy delivery.

Now that 2015 is coming to an end, many countries and organizations are now setting new goals to improve maternal and child survival. USAID recently came out with its new goal to reach an additional 38 million women with increased access to care during childbirth.

With this goal in mind, an action plan was put together in order to achieve this milestone. On their site the organization stated, “the USAID report details how to reach 38 million of the most vulnerable women around the world with increased access to health care during delivery by 2020.”

This plan includes a focus on 24 target countries including, but not limited to Ethiopia, Nepal, Afghanistan, Haiti, and India.

With this aid, more mothers have had access to care during and after the birth of their children. A recent article from the USAID Impact blog reported successes within some of these target countries.

The organization reports that in Ethiopia, 38,000 workers have been trained and dispatched around the country to help mothers and children. In Nepal, female workers travel to provide women with antiseptic gel, free of charge, to reduce infant infection. Malawi has increased efforts to save infants born without fully developed lungs.

Similar stories are beginning to flourish in developing countries around the world. With countries receiving the necessary resources and aid during this vulnerable time for both mother and child, lives are being saved and general health standards improved.

The survival of these mothers and children around the globe is imperative if we are to alleviate the poverty crisis our world now faces.

To quote the USAID Impact post, “When a child dies, and when a mother dies giving birth, it is a tragedy for all of us…because it continues the cycle of extreme poverty that holds the entire world back. Together, we can break that cycle.”

When a mother is lost, children and fathers feel the strain and the community as a whole is affected. When a child is lost, the community misses out on that child’s potential accomplishments and impact. With USAID reaching out to the formerly unreachable, maternal and child survival increases and the community as a whole improves.

– Katherine Martin

Sources: UNICEF, USAID 1, USAID 2
Photo: pixabay

Seven Things You Didn’t Know About the Poorest Country in the World


Malawi is ranked as the poorest country in the world according to GDP per capita. However, Malawi does not just consist of poverty. Below are seven facts that shed light on Malawi:

  1. It was the first country in Africa to sell tea commercially. Tea was brought to Malawi and planted there in 1878. It is now the second largest tea producer in Africa after Kenya.
  2. Malawi was the first country outside of Denmark to have a Carlsberg beer brewery. The Carlsberg Malawi Brewery Limited opened in 1968 as the first Carlberg brewery outside of Denmark. It is also the official beer of the Malawi National Football Team.
  3. Roughly one-fifth of Malawi’s land is occupied by Lake Malawi. Malawi is 45, 745 square miles and Lake Malawi takes up 11,429 square miles of that land.
  4. Lake Malawi has more species of fish than any other lake in the world. Lake Malawi has more than 1,000 species of fish within the lake.
  5. Malawi is called the warm heart of Africa. The country was nicknamed the warm heart of Africa because of its warm culture and friendly people.
  6. The country was once called Nyasaland. Malawi was Nyasaland under the British protectorate and declared itself independent in 1964 as Malawi.
  7. Malawi’s economy is the most tobacco-dependent economy in the world. Approximately 53 percent of Malawi’s exports come from tobacco products. More than 80 percent of the people of Malawi are involved in the tobacco industry.

– Iona Brannon

Sources: Al Jazeera, Carlsberg Group, Encyclopedia of Earth, Fair Trade, Global Finance Magazine, InterPress Service News, Mail and Guardian Africa, US National Library of Medicine

Photo: Flickr

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Big Gains Seen in Socially Responsible Investments

New Report Reveals Dramatic Growth in Impact Investments
Socially Responsible Investments (SRI), those that pay attention to the environmental and social impacts of what they fund while still turning a profit, have ballooned. The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, an association for professionals and organizations engaged in sustainable, responsible, and impact investing, recently released a report detailing the growth of SRI in the United States, showing huge increases in funding.

Coming in at over $6.5 trillion in 2014, the Socially Responsible Investments market in the United States has shown a 76 percent increase since 2012 and has grown nearly tenfold from 1995. “These assets account for more than one out of every six dollars under professional management in the United States,” the report states. The dollar amount is over 200 times larger than the annual flow of Official Development Assistance from the United States.

The growth in SRI is not limited to the United States. The Global Sustainable Investment Alliance, a worldwide collaboration of sustainable investment organizations takes a broader view, looking at the amount of money invested in SRI around the world by region.

In 2014, $21.4 trillion was tied up in SRI around the globe, an increase of $8.1 trillion from two years previously. Europe leads the pack, with 63.7 percent of the total, more than doubling the amount held by the United States. Canada contributes 4.4 of the share, an impressive number considering its relatively small population. In fact, per capita SRI in Canada is higher than the United States. These three regions contribute 99 percent of the total, with Asia and Australia/New Zealand taking .2 and .8 percent respectively.

Europe also has the highest proportion of SRI to total managed assets, with 58.8 percent of all investments channeled towards socially beneficial growth. The global average is just over 30 percent and has grown nearly 50 percent in the last two years.

To be sure, foreign investment by governments to aid developing nations must also be strong. “The global challenges are so complex and the size of the funding that’s needed is so large, traditional funding sources like philanthropy are probably not going to be sufficient to meet it,” said Anna Kearney, associate director for corporate social responsibility at the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon), in July.

In addition, the issue of how much of SRI ends up aiding environmental and social development in the developing world is unclear.

However, the Global Impact Investing Network — a nonprofit working to scale up impact investing — sheds some light on the answer. The group surveyed 146 SRI firms around the globe and found that 48 percent of the $60 billion under management by these firms was invested in emerging markets. That may be a proxy for the ratio of the $21.4 trillion in SRI that is invested in developing economies.

The trajectory for SRI remains promising. As more consumers look to put their money toward helping the planet and the poor while earning a profit, a growth in investment options that offer this will follow.

– John Wachter

Sources: Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment 1, Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment 2, Global Impact Investing Network, Global Sustainable Investment Alliance, The Guardian, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
Photo: Flickr

How Renewable Energy Leads to Opportunities for All

How Renewable Energy Leads to Opportunities for All
Electricity connects people to opportunities such as the internet. The internet has multiple economic and social benefits and is increasingly the gateway to opportunities such as jobs and education. The number of new users has tripled in the past 10 years, but its adoption has slowed due to the lack of access to electricity.

Access to electricity is expanding in cities where they are adopting smart energy grids and building sensor-driven transport systems. In rural areas, electrification is progressing slowly.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, this is especially true, where the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates almost 1 billion will have electricity by 2040, but 530 million who live in the countryside will not.

There is a huge disparity in living standards and economic opportunities between cities and countryside. The world’s 600 largest cities generated $30 trillion GDP in 2007, more than half the global total. They are predicted to generate $64 trillion GDP (60% of total) in 2025.

There are two approaches to dealing with the disparities between cities and rural areas. The cheapest is what happens if nothing is done to address the problem: people move to cities for better economic opportunities. The second solution is rapidly establishing renewable energy and battery storage in rural areas.

Renewable energy is now more feasible given the advances in technology. They also make better use of scarce resources. The use of advanced batteries in electricity grids improves efficiency and allows energy managers to take electricity to remote and underserved areas.

An example of where this can be deployed is India. India could become one of the most energy-insecure countries with 300 million without electricity. However, given renewable energy technologies, it could expand electricity to about 80 million and 110 million in a small period of time.

China is already using digital technologies for ultra-high-voltage (UHV) transmission systems to transport its energy to parts of the country that use the most energy, but have no energy sources.

A South African company uses a combination of a solar charger and battery storage units in remote areas to allow consumers to be able to power mobile phones, computers, radios and lighting.

It would be great to see the development of large-scale renewable solutions continue. This would lead to the sun becoming the world’s largest source of power by 2050. As a result, those in the developing world would be using carbon-free energy.

Given that the per-watt price of photovoltaic cells dropped by 85% since 2000, the McKinsey Global Institute predicts energy storage production will be valued at $100 billion per year by 2025.

– Paula Acevedo

Sources: Stanford Social innovation Review, United Nations
Photo: Pixabay