WHY IS LIFE SO CHEAP IN AFRICA?

By Mutabazi Sam Stewart

Africans die in large numbers because of many causes including diseases, wars, accidents, hunger and ignorance. There is too much death in Sub-Saharan countries that life seems to be of much lesser value than that in the west. One of the explanations given for the high death rates in Africa has been that we have high fertility and birth rates which makes life easy to beget and easy to destroy. Whereas the developed nations take every effort to protect and preserve every living person’s existence through providing dignified services, in Africa life, can be snapped out of a person in a twinkle of an eye and nobody seems to be bothered. Many people have become so accustomed to death in Africa that it doesn’t bother us as much. This is not to say that traditional Africa was any better. In fact it was worse.

What is worrisome is that Africa’s population, though increasing, is constantly subjected to the full rigours of poverty and harsh conditions that often result in deaths which are in most cases preventable. If the rate at which Africans die was applicable to some of the western countries like Canada, their populations would be wiped out in a period not exceeding one century. In the west every person is of value no matter their economic and social status in society. Instead of our governments concentrating on providing people with adequate services and imploring them to focus of quality of lives, we are producing more children who would be able to live for a short time. In other words we are more preoccupied with reproduction than we are with maintenance and attainment of quality lives because anyone can produce a child but not every one can adequately look after a child to adulthood.

Our communities on a daily basis witness unwarranted death to such an extent that it makes one wonder whether this is the life some of us were predestined to live. In Uganda there are common headlines in newspapers which surprisingly never make it to first page. They include; “Man hacks wife to death” , “Man burns house, kills wife, children & self”, “Irate soldier kills five”, “Man goes on rampage, kills four, shoots self”, “Man hangs self”, “Man kills two in land dispute”, “Two left dead in family row”, “Woman strangles her two children, “Mob kills two suspected criminals”, “Mud slides burry five”, Three killed while siphoning fuel”. These are titles of stories that appear in our daily press. They are quite common that some people no longer read them.

Sub Saharan Africa today has a population of 840 million people with an annual growth rate of 2.4% and will double in the next 30 years. According to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), Sub Saharan Africa’s population growth is the fastest in the world despite the fact that the region has the highest death rates at the same time. In simple terms, too many people are being born in so short a time in Africa and they die in too large numbers in too short a time. Africa’s total population has just passed one Billion people. The continent’s population is growing by about 24 million per year. Uganda’s population (latest figures) is 32 million and is projected to rise to 96 million by 2050. USA, with a population of 307 million people has an annual death rate of 2.5 million people compared to Uganda’s annual death rate of 384,000. This means that at the current death rates, if Uganda’s population was like that of USA at 307 million people, Uganda would be losing approximately 4,876,000 people annually. With 1.4 million children being born (live births) in Uganda every year compared to 371,000 born in Canada, it means that Ugandan mothers stare death in the face every time they visit labour words than their Canadian counterparts. Our life is what one can term as “hopeless”.

We continue to live like our traditional forefathers that produced so many children because they believed that some would die and others would survive. Indeed in traditional Africa it was a miracle for a parent to produce five children and they all survive past the age of five. Some would produce up to ten children and only one would survive to adulthood. They attributed this phenomenon to curses and bad luck and constantly consulted their spirits to intervene forgetting that their children were dying because of ignorance and poor health conditions at the time.

It is a shame that thousands of years have passed since that era but not much has changed in a greater part of Africa. In fact there has not been any marked change between the living conditions of Africans who lived two hundred years ago and those living in the current age. The shelter, mode of transport, cultivation, and way of life in general remain similar for most people. To these people development and civilization is nothing but a mirage that neither them nor their children will enjoy. In relation to this scenario, some scholars have agued that Africa may not realise development and much of it may remain backward with nothing much changing in the next five hundred years unless we get focused and well-intentioned leaders that are real patriots in both word and deed.

African leaders have to a great extent let us down. They need to inspire the people they lead into believing that the children they produce shall live up to old age. This should not only be in words. They must begin by putting in place health systems that work. They need to drastically reduce mortality rates by providing basic health care services. They need to restore the hope and dignity of Africans by treating every death of a person with greater concern. Every person’s life should begin to matter. It is only thorough this that we can see death rates coming down and it is only then that every one will begin placing value in the lives of his or her fellow human beings and senseless deaths shall be no more.