Kenya is making great strides toward the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, particularly on providing universal access to education and curbing child mortality rates, the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa says.
Shanta Devarajan based his observations on findings of a 2009 demographic and health survey in Kenya.
“School attendance rates rose with the introduction of free primary education earlier in the decade. Vaccination rates increased sharply between 2003 and 2008. Access to improved water sources also expanded, and phone access jumped as the mobile revolution hit Kenya,” Devarajan shares in World Bank’s “Africa Can End Poverty” blog.
Devarajan further notes that child malnutrition in Kenya dropped, although only slightly, and that child mortality rates plunged by 36 percent from 2003 to 2008. The World Bank official says these advances can be attributed to various factors including economic growth, improvements in Kenya’s health care services and the introduction of anti-malaria interventions.
Decline in child mortality rates is not limited to Kenya, Devarajan adds. Demographic and health data for all sub-Saharan countries show that child mortality rates also plummeted in Benin, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Zambia, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal and Uganda, he shares.
“I think many people have the impression that all of Africa is permanently mired in poverty. But the reality in the ground is much different: great strides are being taken in Kenya and in many other places on the continent,” Devarajan concludes.
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