Aug 22 2012
"[A]ccording to a new African Development Bank report that compares and analyzes the performance of sub-Saharan African countries in the water and sanitation sector," "the two major factors why progress on meeting water and sanitation-related development goals across sub-Saharan Africa is largely uneven" are "[d]ifferences in financial and operational capacities among governments," the Devex "Development Newswire" reports. Specifically, the "factors the report says affect the sub-Saharan African countries' progress toward the United Nations-set targets on sanitation and access to water" include "[u]nderstaffing and lack of technical qualification in relevant government agencies," "[l]ack of adequate operation and maintenance programs in donor-financed projects," and "[i]nadequate national capacities to implement national strategies," the news service writes.
"The bank also compares how effectively countries used development aid they got for this sector, which received less than 0.1 percent of total aid disbursed to the region between 1995 and 2008," according to the news service. "The best performers, according to AfDB's analysis, are Angola, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic, Malawi and Comoros," the news service writes, adding, "The report singles out Angola, whose performance it says is 'considerable' despite having among the least resources for water and sanitation sector." It notes, "The worst performers and highly unlikely to meet their targets by 2015 are Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Congo, Gabon and Madagascar" (Mungcal, 8/17).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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