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October 15, 2001 AIDS and violent conflict in Africa * In sub-Saharan Africa there are more than 25 million Africans infected with HIV/AIDS (70 percent of the world’s cases) and 17 million dead; on its current trajectory, by 2010 the disease will decrease life expectancy on the continent to levels found at the beginning of the last century. * Many governments, international organizations, and NGOs have joined a UN-led movement to address the causes and effects of AIDS in Africa.
It now appears that the international community is fully conscious of the need to commit resources to turn the tide against this plague. * AIDS most frequently strikes at the most productive members of society, those 15-45 years old that are critical to the development of the African state and the stability of the African family. * As AIDS advances in a society it weakens the state’s economic capacity, stealing away its human capital, cutting into its tax base, and drying up foreign investment Power struggles over the state’s limited resources increase the likelihood of violent conflict. The disease leaves in its wake an explosion of the orphan population, thereby increasing the ranks of poverty-stricken children in Africa. * Warfare is an amplifier of disease, creating ideal conditions for its spread, including poverty, famine, destruction of health and other vital infrastructure, large population movements, and the breakdown of family units and thus protective networks for women. The December 2000 report “AIDS Epidemic Update” (United Nations AIDS Fund/World Health Organization) described the stark human tragedy caused by the HIV/AIDS pandemic: 36 million people infected worldwide, 22 illion dead since the identification of the disease some 20 years ago, indications of exponential growth of HIV infection in the Russian Federation, and an escalating AIDS epidemic in Asia. One study (“AIDS Poverty Reduction and Debt Relief: Implications for Poverty Reduction” by UNAIDS and the World Bank, March 2001) has found that HIV-induced declines in gross domestic product (GDP) levels in sub-Saharan Africa are severely undermining poverty reduction efforts in developing countries. According to the report, the pandemic is shaving off up to two percent of annual economic growth in the worst affected countries.
Some countries will see their gross national product (GNP) shrink by up to 40 percent within 20 years. (C. J. L. Murray and A. D. Lopez, eds. , The Global Burden of Disease, World Health Organization and the World Bank, 1996). However, nowhere is the picture as bleak as in sub-Saharan Africa: more than 25 million Africans infected with HIV/AIDS (70 percent of the world’s cases) and 17 million dead; on its current trajectory, by 2010 the disease will decrease life expectancy on the continent to levels found at the beginning of the last century.
These most recent data far surpass the most pessimistic predictions about the effects of the disease in Africa made just five years ago. On the whole, the study suggests, Africa’s income growth per capita is being reduced by about 0. 7 percent per year because of HIV/AIDS. Another study concludes that by 2010, per capita income in South Africa, Africa’s most robust economy, will drop by 7-10 percent while the GDP will be 17 percent lower than it would have been without AIDS (Jeffrey D. Lewis and Channing Arndt, “The Macro Implications of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: A Preliminary Assessment,” Africa Region Working Paper no. 9, December 2000).