D. Human development situation in Africa
11. Africa made limited headway on poverty reduction, eradicating hunger, employment creation, maternal mortality and addressing disparities due to gender, income and disability. Progress in most social development areas was hampered by the global financial and economic crises, with marginalized and vulnerable groups being the most severely affected. Vulnerable groups include older persons; orphans; young people; persons with disabilities; people living with HIV and AIDS; refugees; the internally displaced; and migrants and the poor. Women in these groups suffered disproportionately from shocks associated with the economic slowdown, natural disasters and conflicts. In the reporting period, several factors influenced the access of these vulnerable groups to food, education, employment and health care.
12. Africa’s vulnerable groups continued to face challenges in finding decent work. Most were in “vulnerable employment”, as unpaid contributing family workers, own-account workers or seasonal workers. Others were informal workers in poorly paid petty businesses. As a result of the economic slowdown, governments were constrained to reduce public expenditure on programmes that improved employment opportunities for vulnerable groups. Migrant workers were hit the hardest by the economic downturn, owing to the nature of the sectors that they are employed in. They include construction, manufacturing and hospitality services, which are highly vulnerable to job cuts.
13. Partly as a result of the limited availability of decent jobs, vulnerable groups faced serious difficulties in accessing food and ensuring food security. This was exacerbated by the continued lack of mechanisms for explicit income transfers, food subsidies and price controls in many countries. Overall, older persons, persons with disabilities, refugees and the poor suffered most from higher food prices because of their low incomes.
14. While Africa continued to make progress towards achieving universal primary enrolment, there were still about 46 million primary-school-age children out of school in East, Southern, Central and West Africa, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Also, the significant progress towards enrolment was not accompanied by commensurate gains in completion rates, as in the past. Similarly, the number of children and young people out of secondary education remained alarmingly high in Africa. Overall participation in tertiary education also continued to be very low on the continent, compromising the opportunities for African young people to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to be competitive.
15. Similarly, access to healthcare services by vulnerable groups was limited. In many countries, the health and physical infrastructure remained inadequate in rural and remote areas. In conflict situations, destruction of the physical infrastructure, including roads, health and education facilities, increased personal insecurity and reduced personnel and supplies for social services exacerbated difficulties encountered by vulnerable groups in gaining access to health services.
16. The number of refugees in Africa (excluding North Africa) continued to decline for the eighth consecutive year from a high of 3.4 million in 2000 (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR), 2009). This could be attributed partly to the successful repatriation operations to Angola, Burundi and South Sudan. However, according to UNHCR, renewed armed conflicts and human rights violations led to refugee outflows from some countries, particularly Somalia.
17. Overall, the population of vulnerable groups in Africa continued to rise as a result of natural population growth. Civil strife and continued wars, high levels of illiteracy, poor health services, low levels of social services, accidents and domestic violence in some African countries also contributed to the increase in the number of people with disabilities. The population of people living with HIV and AIDS, in particular, also rose because of factors such as stigma, poverty, drug and alcohol abuse and mobility.