Population, environment, health, and development in Africa

In terms of water access, sub-Saharan African cities are some of the worst off in the world, with 20 % of their populations supplied by an unimproved water source. This situation is even worst in informal settlements. In light of the expected growth of urban populations, there is concern that the gap between the supply and demand for clean water will widen. At first glance, Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso, portrays a counter example since 99 % of the residents having access to an improved water source. Yet, by going beyond the single statistical measure of supply and more precisely providing for the means of water accessibility (i.e. the distance, the time taken to collect water, the quantity and the quality of the water consumed, etc.), we can argue that the indicator using in the MDG target hugely underestimates the need for water accessibility and the persistent social and health issues relate thereto.

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are a pervasive public health challenge in many developing countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. The paper proposes to assess (i) the medium-term impact of the NTD management program on the treated children’s educational outcomes such as school attendance/primary school completion/test scores on school-leaving exams mandatory for children graduating from primary schools in the country, and (ii) the efficacy of supplementary intervention, provision of access to safe water through newly drilled wells, in controlling the risk of re-infection. Through this research we expect to be able to provide evidence for the efficacy of the NTD management program on children’s human capital investment as well as useful suggestions to more effectively address the re-infection risk challenge. The preliminary analysis of difference-in-differences estimator using the school level data finds that the NTD program in Mwanza increased the attendance rate, completion rate and passing rate of the national exam by 2.6%p, 3.2%p and 0.7%p, respectively. The results suggest that the program had a quite sizable impact on attendance and completion by school children, but that its impact on passing the national exam is limited.

In this study, we investigated the relationship between per capita income and environmental degradation in Africa, using longitudinal data between 1990 and 2000. The specific objective was to estimate environmental Kuznets curves for two indicators of environmental quality, namely: lack of access to sanitation, and lack of access to safe water, and to establish whether the estimated relationships conform to the inverted U-shape hypothesis. The results of the empirical investigation generally suggest that evidence of an EKC for lack of access to sanitation is relatively weak. No concrete evidence was found to support the existence of an EKC for lack of access to safe water. The turning point levels of income established for the various indicators of environmental quality were however generally low. This suggests that African countries may be turning the corner of the environmental Kuznets curve, much faster, and at lower levels of income than expected. This also implies that African countries do not need to wait long for a high threshold per capital income for them to appreciate cleaner environment. Consequently, African countries should still keep up efficiency improvements in form of active policy intervention (and in the face of market failures) to prevent environmental degradation.