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July 2012

Tanzania: Let's think together

Jacques Morisset's picture

Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with the newspapwer The Citizen want to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys and ask you a few questions. 

Are all Tanzania children really going to school?

Over the past decade, Tanzania has been close to reaching almost its universal primary education targets according to official statistics. However, when Tanzanian households were asked directly in recent surveys, they reported that: 

 

  • 17% of their seven to thirteen year-olds were not attending school 
  • 30% of the seven or eight year-olds in rural areas were not attending school and as much as 45% for those in the poorest quintile
  • 45% of those of the seven or eight year-olds not attending school in the rural areas are among the poorest people
  • About 1/3 (400,000) of the 1.2 million seven-year-olds are out of school, with rural boys less likely to go to school than girls.

 

Those responses warrant a number of questions:

How Kenya became a world leader for mobile money

Wolfgang Fengler's picture

What if anyone owning a cell-phone, whether rich or poor, also had access to financial services with the ability to save and send money safely, no matter where they are located?  This is not science fiction; in fact it is already happening in Kenya, which has become the world’s market leader in mobile money.

Today, Kenya has more cell-phone subscriptions than adult citizens and more than 80 percent of those with a cell phone also use “mobile money” (or “M-PESA” which is very different from “mobile banking” as Michael Joseph–the former Safaricom CEO, and the man behind that revolution—can explain passionately!).  

Internet access is also increasing rapidly, even though many are complaining about poor service by some operators. Within the next two years, Kenya could become one of the most connected, and modern economies in the developing world, and a unique case among the world’s poorer countries, that have an average annual income of below US$ 1000 per capita (see figure).

Ending the Communicable and Non-communicable Disease Divide in Africa

Patricio V. Marquez's picture

Co-authored with Jill Farrington

The 2011 UN Summit on Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) elevated the importance of NCDs as a pressing global health challenge.  While this recognition was long overdue, are we at risk of establishing a new vertical program, in direct competition for scarce funding with existing communicable diseases control programs and health system strengthening initiatives?

 

If we pay close attention to available evidence, that should not be the case.  The health situation in sub-Saharan Africa nicely illustrates this point, as we have learned from an extensive review of the literature.

 

While the focus in this region has been on communicable diseases and maternal, perinatal and nutritional causes of morbidity and mortality, less attention has been paid to the extent to which these conditions contribute to the growing NCD burden and to potential common intervention strategies. Indeed the biggest increase in NCD deaths globally in the next decade is expected in Africa, where they are likely to become the leading cause of death by 2030. 

If Kenya was a member of the Euro zone – Lessons in managing debt sustainably

Wolfgang Fengler's picture

As European leaders convened in Brussels to find solutions—yet again!—to the debt crisis in the Euro zone, Kenyans are witnessing the old continent’s woes with a mix of surprise and self-satisfaction. 

If only Greece had managed its debt like Kenya, Europe would be in a much better shape today. Greece’s debt would be standing at 45 percent of GDP, less than a third of what it actually is. Recent global economic history would need to be rewritten and Europe’s sick nation would be a macroeconomic success, with the luxury of deciding how to spend its resources well, rather than scrambling to mobilize them.