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Thread: Has God deserted Africa?

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[quote=JCNILE123,249811]This from today's newapaper.

Report: African Conflicts Cost Billions
October 11, 2007 4:02 AM EDT
DAKAR, Senegal - About $18 billion a year has been drained from Africa by
nearly two dozen wars in recent decades, a new report states, a price some
officials say could've helped solve the AIDS crisis and created stronger
economies in the world's poorest region.
"This is money Africa can ill afford to lose," Liberian President Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf wrote in an introduction to the report by the British charity Oxfam and
two groups that seek tougher controls on small arms, Saferworld and the
International Action Network on Small Arms.
"The sums are appalling: the price that Africa is paying could cover the cost of
solving the HIV and AIDS crisis in Africa, or provide education, water and
prevention and treatment for tuberculosis and malaria," Sirleaf added. "Literally
thousands of hospitals, schools, and roads could have been built."
That war makes economies suffer is nothing new, but few have tried to
estimate the real cost across Africa.
Compared to peaceful countries, war-battered African nations have "50 percent
more infant deaths, 15 percent more undernourished people, life expectancy
reduced by five years, 20 percent more adult illiteracy, 2.5 times fewer doctors
per patient and 12.4 percent less food per person," the report estimates.
On average, the economies of African nations wracked by armed conflict
contracted by 15 percent and the impact generally worsened the longer a war
lasted, the report said.
The report based its figures on the ill effects on economic growth by estimating
what growth might have been in countries if they had not suffered conflicts.
During Guinea-Bissau's 1989-99 war, for example, projected growth was 5
percent,but the economy decreased 10 percent, it said.
[/quote]

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