Tag: Botswana

Botswana Demonstrate Just How Democratic It Is

Botswana is generally considered one of the more democratic African nations. Now if you’re a generally democratic nation how do you go about demonstrating your devotion to democratic principles? Well, of course you try to deport a college professor critical of your country.

In February, Botswana President Festus Mogae declared University of Botswana lecturer Kenneth Good to be an “prohibited immigrant” and ordered him deported to his native Australia. Good is being allowed to remain in Botswana while he appeals the deportation order.

The irony here is what Good said that set Mogae off. Good gave a lecture in which he claimed that rather than being democratic, Botswana is run by a secret elite with a few people making all of the decisions. Specifically, he alleged that presidential succession in Botswana is managed by backdoor wheeling and dealing. Obviously having the president initiate a deportation order against Good really disproved that!

Good, for his part, has a habit of being booted out of African countries. According to Reuters, the minority white government of what was then called Rhodesia also deported him in 1973 after he criticized government policies.

Sources:

Prof. Good Allowed to Stay in Botswana Until Deportation Case is Discussed. Network for Education and Academic Rights, March 7, 2005.

Botswana lecturer wins reprieve. The BBC, February 28, 2005.

UN Official Wars AIDS Crisis Could Wreck Africa’s Future

Speaking at a September AIDS conference in Kenya, UN AIDS Program director Michel Sidibe warned that, if left unchecked, the AIDS epidemic threatens to become a catastrophe that will wreck Africa’s future.

Sidibe’s speech reinforced the findings of a UN AIDS report, “Accelerating Action Against AIDS in Africa,” that called for increasing the pace of action against AIDS,

The effects of AIDS in Africa are eroding decades of development efforts. In high-HIV-prevalence countries, families are unraveling, economies are slowing down, and social services are deteriorating. In Southern Africa, where HIV prevalence is higher than anywhere else in the world, AIDS has exacerbated food insecurity, demonstrating how the epidemic and humanitarian crises intertwine.

AIDS has killed an estimated 15 million people in Africa already, and signs are not encouraging to prevent another 15 million deaths. The UN AIDS report notes that infection rates in southern Africa are unbelievably high — in Botswana, for example, 40 percent of the adult population is believed to be HIV positive. A World Health Organization study of pregnant women in southern Africa found 20 percent of those tested were HIV positive.

More money is being committed to fight the AIDS crisis in Africa, but whether aid agencies and governments will be able to translate that money into an effective anti-AIDS strategy remains to be seen. If they fail, Africa’s future is likely to be as bleak as its recent past.

Source:

AIDS ‘threatens African security’. The BBC, September 21, 2003.

U.N.: AIDS Is Major Challenge in Africa. Associated Press, September 21, 2003.

Do Africans Follow Anti-HIV Drug Regimen Better Than Americans?

One of the long-standing arguments against the use of anti-retrovirals to treat the AIDS crisis in Africa goes like this: African countries like the health infrastructure to ensure that patients will consistently take anti-HIV drugs (which, of course, have a number of side effects). This will create a situation, the theory goes, where few patients take the full set of drugs and likely give rise to more virulent, drug-resistant forms of HIV.

But a survey of African patients in Botswana, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda found that, in fact, HIV patients in those countries were more likely to stick to their regimen of AIDS drugs than were Americans.

On average, the survey reported that AIDS patients in those four countries take about 90 percent of the prescribed drugs. That ranks favorably with American AIDS patients who, in similar surveys, reported taking about 70 percent of their anti-HIV drugs.

Interestingly, there is also evidence that African patients are more truthful in reporting their compliance with the anti-HIV regimen than American patients. According to the New York Times’ report of the survey results,

Moreover, doctors say, most African patients are zealous about their regimens. They are also more truthful when estimating their adherence, said Dr. David Bangsberg, a professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco who has studied compliance patterns here and abroad.

On average, he said, American patients tell their doctors that they are doing 20 percentage points better than they really are — that is, a patient who says he takes 90 percent of his pills will, when tested with unannounced home pill counts or electronic pill-bottle caps, turn out to be taking 70 percent.

A study of 29 Ugandan patients found that, on average, they estimated that they were taking 93 percent of pills and proved to be taking 91 percent.

There are a number of possible reason for the difference, including that in African nations a number of people in the AIDS patient’s extended family may be contributing to help pay for the relatively expensive drugs, and that AIDS patients in Africa have a more immediate experience with numerous fatalities from the disease given the relatively high death rate from AIDS in Africa compared to the United States.

Sources:

Africans Outdo Americans in Following AIDS Therapy. Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times, September 3, 2003.

UN: AIDS Epidemic Still Growing

UNAIDS released a report in July claiming that the AIDS epidemic is still in its initial phases, and that the total deaths to AIDS in the developing world will grow to horrific heights over the next few decades.

In the 45 countries where HIV prevalence is the highest, UNAIDS estimates that as many as 68 million people will die from AIDS-related causes between 2000 and 2020. From 1980 to 2000, roughly 13 million people died from AIDS-related causes in those countries.

There was some hope that AIDS prevalence rates might begin to stabilize, but in many of the hardest hit countries they show no such signs. In Zimbabwe, for example, HIV rates jumped from 25 percent in 1997 to 33 percent in 2001. In Botswana, HIV prevalence jumped from 36 percent in 1999 to 39 percent in 2001 — and, as a result, life expectancy in that country is below 40 years for the first time since 1950.

UNAIDS executive director Peter Piot told Reuters, “We haven’t reached the peak of the AIDS epidemic yet. It’s an unprecedented epidemic in human history.”

While Africa will be the main focal point of the deaths, with an estimated 55 million dead, Asia will also suffer major losses of more than 10 million AIDS-related deaths. The main fear is that Asia’s HIV epidemic may explode like Africa’s has. UN AIDS expert Sandra Calvani told NewScientist,

The trend [in Asia] looks like the same as the beginning of the epidemic in Africa. One million infections [in 2001] means 3,000 per day, or 120 per hour. These are shocking figures.

Sources:

UN: AIDS will claim 70 million by 2022. Reuters, July 2, 2002.

Global AIDS epidemic “in early phase”. Emma Young, NewScientist.Com, July 2, 2002.

Measles Vaccination Works in the Developing World

A study published this month in The Lancet should settle once and for all whether or not vaccination of disease is a worthwhile goal to achieve in the developing world. There has been some skepticism over whether or not poor nations possessed the infrastructure to carry out large scale vaccination programs.

The study looked at World Health Organization efforts to vaccinate for measles in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South AFrica, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

Over four years, WHO and national health agencies vaccinated almost 24 million children in those seven countries. The study found that as a result of the vaccination programs, total cases of measles in those countries fell from 60,000 in 1996 to less than 200 in the year 2000. Total deaths dropped from 160 in 1996 to zero in 2000.

Vaccination can work even in extremely poor countries.

Source:

Measles vaccine’s African success story. Corrine Podger, The BBC, May 3, 2002.

Botswana and the Mystery of Growth

The Economist recently looked at one of the odd outcomes of the last half of the 20th century. Over the last 35 years, no country has experienced faster growth in per capita income than Botswana. That’s right, Botswana.

While the rest of Africa is mired in what seems like perpetual poverty, Botswana has had a long period of relative prosperity. Why?

There, things get complicated. As The Economist notes, Botswana is no egalitarian paradise — its income inequality is just as high as in other parts of the world. And with the government consuming 40 percent of the GDP, neither is Botswana a free market paradise.

Several economists have recently published papers on precisely this question and The Economist summarizes their findings thusly,

Wealthy and secure, the [Botswana] elite pursued sensible policies, such as a customs union with South Africa, and a currency pegged to the rand. The country never tried to oust most of its expatriate labour as some other countries did. Foreign mining companies were welcomed, and the country dealt with them fairly but firmly: it even renegotiated its contract with South Africa’s diamond giant De Beers when it realised the scale of its reserves.

Botswana’s experience suggests that poor countries must try to align the incentives of the elite with those of the masses, much as companies in rich countries try to tie managers’ rewards to those of shareholders. It also backs the view of Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist, who has proposed a stronger approach to land titling in poor countries. Where countries receive aid, Botswana’s experience suggests that profitable goals include better courts and legal systems; and that one good use of cash is to fight disease.

…

One lesson from Botswana is that history shapes countries. ANother is that good management is at the centre of growth, and that the rule of law is as important as are the laws of economics.

In fact it may not be possible to overstate the importance of a stable judiciary that provides clear signals for poor and wealthy alike as to how they may proceed in acquiring and disposing of wealth (and thereby enriching the entire country).

Source:

The African exception. The Economist, March 30, 2002.