African Development Indicators 2004
This year's edition of the World Bank publication, African Development Indicators (ADI) 2004, depicts a diverse picture of development in Africa, with several countries making remarkable progress and others lagging seriously behind. ADI 2004 p...
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| Format: | Publication |
| Language: | English en_US |
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Washington, DC
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/01/3337622/african-development-indicators-2004 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13918 |
| Summary: | This year's edition of the World
Bank publication, African Development Indicators (ADI) 2004,
depicts a diverse picture of development in Africa, with
several countries making remarkable progress and others
lagging seriously behind. ADI 2004 presents data for more
than 500 indicators of development for 53 countries.
Thirteen Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries averaged more
than 5 percent growth for the period 1995-2002, but many
others saw their economies contract, usually as a result of
severe civil conflict and adverse weather conditions. The
region's economic growth slowed in 2002 to 2.8 percent,
slightly down from 2.9 percent in 2001. Net foreign direct
investment flows continued on a rising trend and reached
$8.9 billion in 2002. These continued to be heavily
concentrated in oil exporting countries and South Africa.
The increase in official aid to the region fell far below
the levels required to put a significant dent on poverty or
achieve the MDGs. Debt relief is playing a larger role in
Africa's resource picture, as total debt service relief
reached $43 billion in fiscal year 2003, at a time when, as
the book notes, "pro-poor expenditures had begun to
increase in most of the countries". Gross enrollment in
primary schools recovered to 87 percent, up from 80 percent
in 1980. The increase contributed to a drop in illiteracy
rates from 47 percent in 1997 to 37 percent in 2002.
Tracking the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the book reveals that almost
30 million Africans are infected and eleven million children
have been orphaned. In 2001 alone, 2.2 million AIDS-related
deaths were recorded on the continent. Bearing the diverse
performance in mind, the publication notes that Africa
urgently needs rich nations to deliver on their promises of
more generous aid and wider trade opportunities to reverse
the exacting cruelty of disease and poverty on the
continent. Civil wars, the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS, anemic
aid, persistent low growth rates and weak commodity prices,
threaten gains of the recent years in overall poverty
alleviation and may jeopardize Africa's chances of
attaining some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. |
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