Archive for category: Global Poverty

Key articles and information on global poverty.

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Cleaner Water for Sub-Saharan Africa?

New water purification system in Tanzania Tanzanian entrepreneur Askwar Hilonga has invented a solution to a crisis that plagues his hometown in Tanzania, as well as the greater sub-Saharan Africa region, the lack of pure drinking water. Hilonga has created a water filter, the Nanofilter, that uses nanotechnology for water purification.

Hilonga was born and raised in an impoverished rural region of Tanzania. In his youth, he and his family had no access to clean water. He decided to devote his life to ending this atrocity, aiming to provide millions of people with this basic human right.

Hilonga’s water filter is sand-based — it uses sand to trap bacteria. The nanotechnology eliminates smaller particles like fluoride, heavy metals and chemical contaminants. It purifies water by 99.9 percent.

In Tanzania alone, 70 percent of the population does not have access to clean water or any type of water purification system. 88 percent of infant mortality is caused by waterborne diseases.

Hilonga is motivated to bring change to the country because of these statistics, but also because of his own experience growing up without clean water.

“I was born in rural Tanzania and raised by a poor family in which most of the times we were suffering from waterborne diseases because we could not afford the luxury of expensive bottled water,” explained Hilonga to How we Made it in Africa.

Hilonga, who received his PhD in Nanotechnology from a university in South Korea, won the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation this June, a $38,390 check to help get his company started. The money has enabled him to build his company. “It’s time to save more lives. And grow my business,” said Hilonga.

The Royal Academy of Engineering, which distributes the African Prize for Engineering Innovation, said that the Nanofilter is a transformative invention with the potential to save lives of innumerable Africans, as well as the lives of people across the world.

The Nanofilter is slowly becoming available across Tanzania. Ten entrepreneurs in the country operate water stations that utilize the Nanofilter at the center of their business model.

“We rent the filter to them and they sell drinking water at an affordable price – five times cheaper than the bottled water,” explained Hilonga. The entrepreneurs who run the stations then pay Hilonga’s company around fifty cents per day.

The Nanofilter is cost-effective, with a market price of only $130 per unit. Hilonga believes that the price will continue to drop because, due to his prize money, he can buy materials in bulk and save money.

Nine households have already purchased units. Hilonga has also sold nine filters to local schools, the price subsidized by a Canadian charity.

“We have orders now from various places in Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia. At present the demand for our filter is higher than our ability to supply…Now we are able to increase our production capacity and we will also strengthen our team by employing more people for sales and marketing,” said Hilonga.

Before Hilonga won the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, he feared that the Nanofilter would never make it due to financial constraint. “I was always looking for external sources of support at least for seed capital,” he said.

The Prize, he explained, not only gave him financial confidence, but also business training. Additionally, due to the prize the Nanofilter was publicized and gained credibility.

Hilonga’s plans for the future are ambitious — he wants to provide the 70 percent of nine million in Tanzania who currently do not have access to water treatment with access to the Nanofilter. After that, he hopes to reach the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa.

– Aaron Andree

Sources: How We Made It In Africa, BBC
Photo: QuartzAfrica

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Child Empowerment International Provides Education in Sri Lanka

Child Empowerment International provides schooling for underprivileged children in Sri Lanka
Children living in areas in Sri Lanka affected by war commonly do not have access to the resources and funds needed to receive an education. Many of these children suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder and issues due to their harsh living conditions. Child Empowerment International works to help children who have been negatively affected by war and other violent experiences overcome difficulties, cope with reality and receive an education.

Child Empowerment International establishes day schools in the refugee centers and communities these children live in. Over the past 17 years, the organization helped increase an individual’s future earnings by ten percent through education and training. Their staff of over 200 teachers prepares students for testing in Sri Lanka, which is based on the British education system. Studies conducted by Child Empowerment International have shown students graduating from their program score in the top five percentile on these standardized exams.

Students are taught basic school subjects like grammar and biology and receive career training to become carpenters, seamstresses, chefs, mechanics and hotel managers. Many students are also taught English and computer skills.

Child Empowerment International was started in 1998 to provide children living in war ridden zones holistic care. The organization started with 17 schools, but by the following year they were up to 29 schools. Child Empowerment International began by training teachers and counselors to mentor children who had suffered from sexual abuse and other traumatic experiences.

Founder Adam Salmon worked to establish a textbook-exporting company in Sri Lanka in 1994, but decided to change his line of work when he realized there were large numbers of abandoned children not receiving aid from other organizations. As the founder, he manages the hundreds of teachers working for Child Empowerment International and dedicates his time to improving the lives of the 6,800 children impacted by the organization.

The organization also dedicated themselves to helping the survivors of the tsunami that struck Sri Lanka in 2004. Several hundred students were orphaned by catastrophe and Child Empowerment International lost 126 of their students. The organization worked to find homes for children, provide resources and rebuild the schools lost to the storm.

Today, Child Empowerment International has over 80 schools established in Sri Lanka and other impoverished communities. Their newest project enacted in 2010 is working to provide education and healthcare to children in Uganda.

Students at their schools have successfully graduated from university and gained professional experience in the profession of their choice, with many of them becoming teachers or health professionals. Child Empowerment International is gathering quantitative data of the impact of their work on an individual’s success. Publication of this is set for 2017.

– Julia Hettiger

Sources: Child Empowerment, Global Giving, Matador Network
Photo: Porticus

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Global Health Investments Save 34 Million Children

Global Health Investments Work: 34 Million Children Saved Since 2000
New data has been able to reveal that global health investments have been able to save 34 million children since 2000. Several of these international collaborations have decreased child mortality rates in half for those under the age of 5 in several countries.

The United Nations’ Millennium Declaration was created on September 2000 as a list of goals that would help reduce global poverty in half by 2015. One of the goals in the Millennium Declaration included providing better health access and lowering children mortality rates throughout the world.

Countries within the United Nations pledged to provide aid in order to reduce mortality rates in children under the age of 5. The goal was to have a two-thirds reduction by 2015.

In June 2015, the United Nations declared that its goal had been reached in several countries but much could still be done to improve child mortality rates in other regions.

A major concern from governments with the Millennium Development Goals was how to account for accountability. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Financing the Health Millennium Development Goals and for malaria were able to create a solution.

The IHME at the University of Washington and the U.N. reached out to medicinal agencies and non-governmental organizations that were given the child mortality reduction task. International collaborations with scientists allowed both organizations to create a scorecard that kept track of foreign aid and the progress made in different regions of the world.

This scorecard will continue to be used to further promote investments in children’s global health and as a way for people around the world to hold the regions receiving the aid accountable.

For now, the scorecard is being used to reveal how much direct impact foreign aid can have on global health for children. The statistics showed that only US$4,205 is needed to keep a child healthy from birth until 5 years of age.

Low and middle income countries helped turn low child mortality rates into a reality by providing US$133 billion in children’s global health investments. The international aid that was invested helped saved 20 million children.

Meanwhile, private and public donors contributed US$73.6 billion and saved 14 million young lives. The majority of the donors were from low- and middle-income countries according to the data.

In comparison, the United States was able to save 3.3 million children by using only one-third of its less than 1 percent foreign aid budget plan.

Much of the aid went to providing vaccines, HIV/AIDs testing, sanitation and nutrition. Although much has been accomplished, the United States Agency for International Aid (USAID) has stated that the United States has the ability to do much more for young children.

According to the USAID’s 5th Birthday Campaign, 6.6 million children will die this year before their fifth birthday. The campaign states that that is nearly 18,000 children dying per day – most of them dying from preventable causes.

Through the 5th Birthday Campaign the U.S. will continue investing in family parenting, vaccines, sanitation and nutrition to help more children live beyond their fifth birthday.

Internationally, the United States has agreed to work with other countries in funding the Global Financing Facility. A post-2015 organization that will work toward further reaching the United Nations Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health and the Sustainable Development Goals.

International governments and public and private donates have agreed on a US$12 billion budget for the Global Financing Facility. While the U.N. Millennium Development Goals sought to lower child mortality rates by two-thirds, the Global Financing Facility aims to completely lower maternity and child mortality rates by 2030.

With 2030 only a few years away the Global Financing Facility has a ticking clock. However, seeing how the U.N. Millennium Development Goals were able to succeed, the Global Financing Facility is having a positive start with much international support.

– Erendira Jimenez

Sources: USAID, WHO, Un Millenium Project, Scaling Up Nutrition, Washington

Photo: Universityofwashington

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Why Clean Energy Development and Poverty Reduction Are Related

clean energyThere is a strong case to be made for the hand-in-hand relationship between clean energy development and poverty reduction across the globe. Both causes deserve greater funding and attention because of the profound effects they will have on the future of the globe and generations to come. Economic incentive is important to ensuring that both causes move forward in strides.

Clean energy, or green energy, is providing populations with energy for heating, cooking, electronics and everything else that requires energy, but without polluting the atmosphere to aggravate more climate change or destroy environmental resources. Its importance will become increasingly more significant in the future as more environmental challenges arise. However, human foresight is often not the strength of political institutions, and there will likely be an abbreviated rush towards clean energy that ramps up exponentially in the future. In order to build up clean energy infrastructure and a clean energy supply, which most countries lack, a “new deal” will have to be enacted. Countries will need to invest heavily in the research and development of clean energy technologies while also putting into place clean energy infrastructure and facilities that will decrease dependence on oil.

The process of having many nations attempting switches to clean energy technologies in an effort to ease off of oil will have structural effects on the local and global economies. Currently, on the global scene, developed nations are responsible for about 80 percent of the world’s total energy usage. As developed nations begin to lean toward clean or green energies, they are focusing on strategies that could hurt developing nations. For example, carbon emission caps and some clean energy technologies that take up large patches of land have both been introduced by developed nations and criticized by developing nations. Many argue that large land grabs could have potentially poor consequences for agricultural workers pushed off the land and that carbon emission caps could stunt economic growth. But is there a silver lining to these possible downsides?

If developing nations are forced to confront the issue of green energy sooner rather than later, they may end up saving an incalculable sum of money by directly adopting cleaner energies instead of transitioning to oil and coal to meet growing energy demands, and then making another eventual switch to clean energies. Also, forcing developing nations to use clean energy could spur innovative manufacturing sectors. The switch to clean energies across the globe will prompt massive amounts of funding in new areas that will be able to revitalize economies across the world and create jobs for millions through construction, research and ripple effects.

Energy poverty is also an issue. The UN has goals of getting electricity to everyone by 2030. Right now, hundreds of millions of people go without energy like electricity, and a disproportionate number of them are women. Energy poverty is a problem that contributes to the vicious cycle of poverty because of the amount of labor and time that must go into collecting wood or other sources of energy for the family. Decreasing dependence on sources like oil and coal and adopting cleaner sources such as solar energy will help mitigate pressures on poor families that keep them poor, like energy poverty.

The impending growth of clean energies will be most beneficial to those in need possibly more than anyone else. There is enormous potential for leveraging the urgency and priority that both of these issues will take on in the future to create economic prosperity for many more countries and to slow down the catastrophic implications of climate change.

– Martin Yim

Sources: European Commission, Forbes, National Geographic
Photo: Needpix.com

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US to Increase Funding for Global Health Security Agenda

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The U.S. developed the Global Health Security Agenda to prevent, detect and respond to disease threats. The goal is to stop outbreaks from ever becoming epidemics. Today’s biological threats include the emergence of new microbes, spread through globalization, drug resistance diseases, accidental release and illicit usage of disease. The latest challenges with Ebola prompted the U.S. to increase funding and aid for the Global Health Security Agenda.

One billion dollars have been donated to expand resources to allow countries to deal with biological threats on their own. Investment is desperately needed in the areas of infrastructure, equipment and skilled personnel. The radar includes 17 countries, bringing the total amount of countries to receive aid to at least 60. Countries in Asia and the Middle East to receive the money include Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Vietnam.

Africa will be the main source of attention, with about half of the money being invested there. The money will contribute to improving or creating systems that prevent and mitigate outbreaks–whether they be intentional or natural–that report outbreaks, and that can respond to outbreaks. To accomplish these goals, the U.S. works directly with partner countries’ governments to create a five year plan.

Another part of the Security Agenda is to build African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The African Union stands behind these projects to help promote disease science and research in Africa. There will also be country specific Public Health Initiatives to boost specific countries health agendas and departments.

The one billion dollar investment will aid reaching the health targets set by the World Health Organization and the UN. The Security Agenda works within the global health frameworks to ensure that there is understanding across sectors and countries.

– Katherine Hewitt

Sources: GlobalHealth.gov, The White House 1, The White House 2
Photo: GEN

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DHL to Invest Millions in Sub-Saharan Africa

DHL To Invest Millions in Sub-Saharan Africa, Sets Example for Foreign Direct Investment
Logistics leader DHL has joined the ranks of companies taking advantage of Sub-Saharan Africa’s potential for economic growth, which experts anticipate will coincide with continued improvements in infrastructure.

While the number of foreign direct investments (FDI) has decreased in recent years, capital investment in Africa has largely increased. Today’s average investment is US$174.5 million per project, up from US$67.8 million in 2013.

“The perception of investing in Africa has traditionally been rather negative, coupled with the fear of the unknown,” said Managing Director of DHL’s Sub-Saharan Africa region, Charles Brewer. “However, in 2014, traditional investors refocused their attention on the continent, attracted by its strong macroeconomic growth and outlook, improving business environment, a rising consumer class, abundant natural resources and infrastructure development.”

Improvements in infrastructure can be extremely cost-effective in developing regions, where underdeveloped infrastructure tends to increase costs for people and companies like DHL. According to African Business Review, supply chain costs are up to nine times more expensive in Africa than other regions around the world. Investments in infrastructure projects help streamline the supply chain and thus create more favorable economic environments for foreign and domestic companies alike.

According to economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Jeffrey Sachs, Africa will need to adopt an infrastructure-heavy plan to achieve double-digit economic growth in the coming years. According to him, that program ought to include large-scale investments in trans-national infrastructure projects in the way of power, roads, broadband and other basic infrastructural needs.

“There is no choice; Africa needs 10 percent per year of economic growth over the next 15 years,” Sachs said.

One institution working to increase investment in these infrastructure projects is the European Investment Bank (EIB), which plans to open offices in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Zambia and Mozambique within the next year. Investments like the EIB’s US$43.8 million water and sanitation project in Ethiopia will help narrow what The World Bank estimates to be a US$93 million funding gap for African infrastructure development.

“Growth will remain strong in most low-income countries, owing to infrastructure investment and agriculture expansion,” wrote The World Bank in its outlook for Africa earlier this year. “However, extreme poverty remains high across the region. Foreign Direct Investments fell in 2014, reflecting slower growth in emerging markets and declining commodity prices. Several countries including Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya and Senegal, were able to tap international bond markets to finance infrastructure projects.”

As companies like DHL continue to invest in infrastructural improvements across the African continent, businesses will become better able to minimize the challenges resulting from a lack of reliable power and other supply-side obstacles. Streamlining the supply chain in developing countries can also save massive amounts of money for American companies hoping to tap into new and emerging markets. If such investment continues, Africa might well meet its goal of double-digit economic growth within the next 10 years, and regional markets could become the forces for poverty reduction that economists like Jeffrey Sachs believe they can be.

– Zach VeShancey

Sources: Daily Independent, African Business Review, MG Africa, The World Bank
Photo: AfricanBrains/span>

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Making Dinner Using the Solar Reflector

Solar_Reflector
In 2013, Gregor Schaper, a German entrepreneur, installed a series of circular solar panels in a town just outside of Mexico City. This is the home of Schaper’s Solar Reflector.

The Solar Reflector is comprised of solar panels that follow the course of the sun throughout the day to maximize absorption while focusing its light on one point throughout the year. This is similar to when a kid tries to use a magnifying glass to start a fire. The heat is collected as the Solar Reflector follows the sun and is then projected onto one specific spot in a kitchen.

This specific spot can reach up to 1000° Celsius, making it useful for baking, cooking and frying. The temperature is kept consistent with an integrated stone core in the kitchen. The Solar Reflector itself is made up of steel sections with highly reflective aluminum, cut into a 170-square-foot disks.

Trinysol, the company Schaper founded, manufactures the panels and cost about $4,000 to built. Despite the cost, once the Solar Reflector is built, it is free to operate and produces no greenhouse gas emissions. On average, each reflector saves 16 gallons of gas each month.

For small to medium sized businesses, this technology could be game changing. For small restaurants, bakeries and tortillerias, it could save money when the price of fossil fuels is high, creatubg jobs all the while. In addition, since the Solar Reflector projects the light right into their kitchen, it saves people from from going outside and braving the heat during the exceptionally hot summer days.

“Tortillería La Fe” in El Sauz near Mexico City was one of the first small businesses to use Schaper’s Solar Reflector. According to Schaper, the shop used to spend over $1,000 a month on gas in order to cook tortillas but now gets it for free with the Solar Reflector. The initial cost of the Solar Reflector is significant but the outcome is worthwhile.

– Hannah Resnick

Sources: Empowering People, Future Challenges, Inhabit, Venture Beat
Photo: Inhabitat

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Is AIDS on the Rise Again?

The Threat of a Major AIDS Resurgence
Is AIDS on the rise despite the increase in HIV treatment availability throughout the world? A recent report by the Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and The Lancet, a medical journal, have called attention to the emerging risk of a major AIDS resurgence in already affected regions.

According to the study, high rates of population growth in heavily affected areas and staggering infection rates, which continue to only fall slowly, will increase the number of people who need access to life saving treatment.

Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and lead author of the report, Professor Peter Piot, stated, “We must face hard truths — if the current rate of new HIV infections continues, merely sustaining the major efforts we already have in place will not be enough to stop deaths from AIDS increasing within five years in many countries.”

Among the most vulnerable populations, women and girls have not reaped the same benefit from slowly falling infection rates in comparison to their male counterparts. According to UN News Centre, AIDS-related illnesses are the leading cause of death for Sub-Saharan woman and girls of reproductive age.

The population of HIV-positive adolescent girls reaches sevenfold that of males. Additionally, many adolescent girls become infected with HIV 5 to 7 years before men.

In a commitment to prevent new HIV infections and increase treatment among women and girls, UNAIDS and the African Union have come together in a report called “Empower young women and adolescent girls: Fast-Track the end of the AIDS epidemic in Africa”.

“As we work with our communities, our networks, our health service providers and our governments, we must commit to demanding a comprehensive focus on young women in the AIDS response,” said Rosemary Museminali, UNAIDS Representative to the African Union.

In this response lies the answer to the threat of resurgence. As the study argues, efforts to combat AIDS must be enhanced to proportionally treat those infected, improve knowledge and prevention, and provide better access to medication.

More recently, the United Nations sponsored a successful deal with Roche Diagnostics in order to reduce the price of early infant diagnostic technology by 35 percent to US$9.40. Early diagnosis of HIV is essential to accessing treatment at a vital stage since many children who go undiagnosed only live up to 2 or 5 years.

“We have to act now,” Michel Sidibé, executive director of UNAIDS cautions, “The next five years provide a fragile window of opportunity to fast-track the response and end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. If we don’t, the human and financial consequences will be catastrophic.”

– Jaime Longoria

Sources: UNAIDS, UN News Centre 1, UN News Centre 2, UN News Centre 3

Photo: HealthNest

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Education System in Yemen Suffers in Conflict Zones

education_system_in_yemen
Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, has experienced numerous violent conflicts over the past few decades. This is mainly due to an inequality in access to power and resources. Corruption is commonplace in Yemen’s relatively weak government, and conflicts are only exacerbated by poor infrastructure, high unemployment, food insecurity and limited social services. Currently, competing groups are fighting for control of the government, resulting in a scenario akin to a civil war. Those loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who was forced to flee the capital in February, have come up against a group of Zaidi Shia rebels called Houthis. Regional tensions and instability have increased.

Before the current conflict, many children were already out of school, and few completed secondary education. Primary enrollment stood at 73.8 percent, with a 60.4 percent completion rate. There was a large gender gap, with 85.2 percent of boys enrolled and only 62 percent of girls. Secondary enrollment was much lower, with only 33.5 percent attending. The gender gap persisted, with 43.6 percent of boys attending and 20.7 percent of girls. Literacy rates were also low: 65 percent of the population over the age of 15 could read and write.

The conflict has had a large negative impact on the education system in Yemen. 1.8 million children are out of school. 3,600 schools have been directly affected: 248 of these schools have been damaged, 270 have been repurposed for housing internally displaced citizens and 68 have been occupied by armed groups.

Because schooling has been interrupted for many students, UNICEF has been holding catch-up classes for over 200,000 students who have been unable to go to school for over two months due to conflict. These classes are intended to prepare students in grades 9 and 12 for their national mid-August exams, which they must pass to earn a basic or secondary school certificate. Yemen’s Ministry of Education has played an important role in mobilizing teachers and designating temporary learning spaces in areas where schools were destroyed. UNICEF has also been providing free resources such as notebooks and pencils.

Yemen’s school year is set to begin on September 5, but this could change depending on the security situation. UNICEF is currently trying to raise $11 million to help struggling students and fix schools that have been damaged by conflict. This money will go to rebuilding schools, supplying more teaching and learning resources, training teachers and community workers and running a back-to-school campaign. Education is crucial for Yemeni children to help themselves, their families, their communities and their country in the face of conflict.

– Jane Harkness

Sources: BBC, Index Mundi, UNICEF
Photo: USAID

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Deworming Rwanda

Deworming campaign Improving School Attendance in Rwanda
Unquestionably, one of the most effective weapons fighting global poverty today is education, and in Rwanda, a small country in central eastern Africa, it’s essential. Absence is commonplace however, with children suffering from abdominal pain, diarrhea and nausea. Attendance in school is difficult for children with soil-transmitted helminth infections.

In collaboration with Ministries of Health, a campaign to combat the disease was launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) and has shown success in getting students back in school.

According to WHO, soil-transmitted helminth infections are among the most common infections worldwide and affect the poorest and most deprived communities. They are transmitted by eggs present in human feces, which contaminate soil in areas where sanitation is poor. The disease is easily contracted by walking barefoot on contaminated soil or eating contaminated food.

The main species that infect people are the roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), the whipworm (Trichuris trichiura) and the hookworms (Necator americanus and Ancylostoma duodenale).

Soil-transmitted helminth causes a spectrum of health problems, from the indiscernible to the severe, which can includ abdominal pain, diarrhea, blood and protein loss, rectal prolapse and physical and mental retardation. The severity of infection is directly related to the worm burden.

The disease, one of the most common parasitic ailments in the world, affects approximately 2 billion people, nearly two thirds of the world’s population, and it is estimated that 4 billion others are at risk.

In Rwanda, illnesses can be extraordinarily bad. According to WHO, ninety-five percent of school aged children living in the Musanze District were suffering in 2007, one of the highest rates in the country.

There, soil-transmitted helminth is contracted mainly from dirty water, fetched from nearby Lake Ruhondo and those who use the stagnant water from the former banks of the Mukungwa River. Open defecation is still practiced in the area and sanitation is almost non-existent.

In 2007, whole families were getting sick. Parents stayed home caring for sick children, which prevented them from being able to work, and children were too sick to go to school or earn a menial income raising livestock or growing vegetables.

Worldwide, the WHO has been working tirelessly to control the spread of soil-transmitted helminth by facilitating wider access to preventive medicine such as albendazole and mebendazole. According to Dr. Antonio Montresor, Medical Officer for WHO in the Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases, the deworming campaign reached more than 395 million children in 2014, making it one of the largest global public health interventions.

In the Musanze District of Rwanda, the WHO provides the necessary medications to local schools, which are then disseminated to the population. Since the program started, the rate of children with intestinal worms has been reduced by nearly 20 percent.

Education is essential in alleviating global poverty. Every day a child is absent from class, the likelihood they can break the endless cycle disappears a little more. The WHO is striving to keep students in school and families healthy, making a chance to prosper a reality.

– Jason Zimmerman

Sources: WHO 1, WHO 2
Photo: TheGuardian