DEVELOPMENT: Africa Spending Less on Basic Social Services (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Title: DEVELOPMENT: Africa Spending Less on Basic Social Services

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 12 (IPS) - A new UN survey on social spending
reveals that only three countries in Africa are allocating more
than 20 percent of budget funds for use on basic health care,
education and nutrition - the goal set by the 1995 Social Summit
in Copenhagen.

The survey, conducted jointly by the UN Children's  Fund
(UNICEF) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), shows that
Namibia spends about 30 percent of its national budget on basic
social services, Mali about 23 percent and Kenya 20 percent.

The rest of Africa's poorer nations, including Cameroon (8.0
percent), Ivory Coast (9.0 percent), Tanzania (10 percent) and
Benin (18 percent), spend less than 20 percent on education and
health - far below target.

The so-called ''20/20 Initiative'' - adopted unanimously
adopted at the Copenhagen summit - urges industrial nations to
devote at least 20 percent of their aid budgets  to basic social
services, while developing nations are asked to set aside about 20
percent of national budgets.

The social services include reproductive health, primary
education, nutrition, safe water supply and sanitation.

UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy says the 20/20
Initiative also a recognises the fact that the issue of
development and development aid is not just a matter of concern
only to the world's wealthier donor nations.

''Even the poorest nations should make some commitment to
provide basic social services to their people,'' Bellamy says.
''Realistically, however, this is not happening.''

Bellamy concedes, however, that most of the poorer nations of
the world now are forced to spend more on debt-servicing than on
health and education.

''This is the stranglehold that debt has on these countries and
it virtually precludes 20/20 from having an impact,'' she told
IPS.

A 45-page UN report released in April says that, statistics from
some 30 countries shows that governments allocate on average only
about 12-14 percent of their budgets to basic social  services
which is below what is needed to reach universal coverage of basic
social services.

In its annual report for 1999, UNICEF says that during the
1990s a broad understanding was reached that access for all, to
basic social services, is vital for reducing poverty.

Yet millions of children still are being deprived of their
right to education, health care and nutrition, reducing them to a
life steeped in perpetual poverty, UNICEF says.

The annual report notes that levels of aid to basics services
can also vary widely over time. In Niger, for example, the share
rose from 6.0 percent in 1992 to 18 percent in 1999 while in Peru
it dropped from 22 percent in 1994 to 5.0 percent in 1996.

Addressing a meeting of the UN's Economic and Social Council in
Geneva last month, Secretary-General Kofi Annan focused
specifically on the deteriorating economic and social conditions
in Africa.

Annan says that there are a number of priorities to achieve
social development, particularly an increase of enrollment in
primary education, which is still too low in at least 16 African
countries, and an improvement of the overall health situation in
Africa ''which still gives cause for concern.''

''Financing Africa's development is crucial'' to win the fight
against poverty, he says.

Annan says that 44 percent of all Africans - and 51 percent of
those in sub-Saharan Africa - live in absolute poverty, less  than
one dollar a day.

Meanwhile, Africa's debt stock has increased from 344 billion
dollars in 1997 to 350 billion dollars in 1998, and is equivalent
to more than 300 percent of exports of goods and services.

Official development assistance to Africa continues to decline,
falling from its peak of 23 billion dollars in 1992 to 18.7
billion dollars in 1997, Annan says. Additionally, foreign direct
investment to Africa amounts only to some 4.7 billion dollars -
about 3.0 percent of global flows.

Growth rates, which during the mid-1990s reached more than 5.0
percent annually, have now declined.  Growth was 2.7 percent in
1997 and 2.5 percent in 1998 but is expected to rise to 3.0
percent in 1999 and to 3.5 percent in 2000.

Annan says that halving poverty by 2015 will require a 7.0
percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per year for Africa
as a whole until that date.

''The overview of the present situation shows that internal
resources of the continent would not be sufficient to reach this
goal,'' he adds. (END/IPS/td/mk/99)

Origin: ROMAWAS/DEVELOPMENT/
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