Africa is not a village. It is not a country. It is a continent of 53 countries and more than a thousand languages. It has the world’s longest river and largest desert, its fastest growing cities and most rapidly expanding mobile phone network.
It is a region of extremes and the range of challenges it faces are as vast and complex as the continent itself.
Almost half of all Africans live on less than $1 a day – yet Africa produces more than half the world’s gold and diamonds. The divide between rich and poor is growing and HIV, unfair trade, conflict, climate change and corrupt and incompetent governments are driving the wedge deeper.
HIV
Africa is facing ever longer and more frequent droughts, flash floods and locust plagues. Its deserts are getting bigger and its rivers are running dry
HIV poses one of the biggest threats to development – more than 24 million people in Africa live with the virus and an estimated 12 million children have lost one or more parents to AIDS.
‘AIDS kills people, but Africa can fight it,’ says Thecla Marie-Bernadette, the director of our Kinshasa-based partner, Fondation Femmes Plus. ‘We need education, testing facilities and free access to antiretroviral drugs – this will give people hope and enable them to contribute to the development of their country.’
Our partners provide the things that people need so that HIV does not have to ruin their lives. They pay school fees for orphans, challenge stigma and provide healthcare, counselling and small business grants. This means people can get their lives back and are able look after themselves and each other.
As Winstone Zulu, an HIV activist from Zambia, says, ‘Solving HIV isn’t rocket science.’
Climate change
‘For me climate change is the most important issue – number one. It’s an issue of life; of survival,’ explains Boubacar Sidiki Dembele, technical advisor to the Malian Ministry of the Environment.
Africa is facing ever longer and more frequent droughts, flash floods and locust plagues. Its deserts are getting bigger and its rivers are running dry. The poorest are not equipped to cope.
Christian Aid is working with partners to invest in the land and help people to cope with climate change. Tree-planting schemes, irrigation, terracing and rain-water harvesting are all providing local solutions to global problems.
In countries where the sun always shines but where only a small percentage of the population has access to the electricity grid, solar power is another obvious alternative. Through our partner Centre Ecologique Albert Schweitzer local artisans in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, have harnessed new solar technologies, creating small businesses that make solar-powered fridges, water heaters and water pumps.
Conflict and power
Across Africa, conflict has devastated the lives of millions.
Today Darfur plagues the conscience of the international community. The UN says that the current crisis there is the worst in the world, yet efforts to seek a resolution and provide protection for the two million people living in camps have been weak.
In areas of conflict across Africa our partners deliver food, water, medical supplies and shelter. They also lobby for peace and we lobby with them, asking our own governments to use their influence and resources to protect people caught in the crossfire and push for an end to violence.
But the work isn’t finished when the fighting ends. Christian Aid stays with people as they rebuild their lives.
For countries such as Uganda, Sierra Leone and Angola, the long road to recovery is a difficult one. People return home with nothing. The traumatic memories of brutal conflict can foster hatred and building a life again can take years.
Yet people are determined to move on and, in Angola, Urraca Jose Salamao echoes the voices of millions when she says: ‘War makes people brutal… but you have to forgive, even people who did terrible things. You have to forgive and find a way to forget.’
R&B star Lemar, just back from a trip to northern Uganda with Christian Aid, says: ‘I heard some awful stories and I found myself asking: who’s guilty; who’s innocent? But I saw how people can go through terrible things and survive, and forgive, and move on with their lives. It was a big eye-opener.’
Masters of their own destiny
In Africa people do not want pity; they want the means to secure their rights.
‘I want to motivate my people to realise our development lies in our own hands,’ says John Foday, a peace activist with the Methodist Church of Sierra Leone.
But Africa cannot overcome its poverty alone. Rich industrialised countries need to act to cancel third world debt, change the way international trade is organised and cut the carbon emissions that are crippling Africa’s efforts to work its way out of poverty.
It is an outrage that millions of people across Africa go to sleep every night hungry, sick and scared because of complacency and greed. We wouldn’t let this happen on our doorstep; we shouldn’t let this happen in Africa.
What we do makes a difference and we will carry on campaigning to give Africans the chance to be the masters of their own destiny.
Sources: World Development Indicators, 2002; UNAIDS, 2006.