Eastern Africa- Background
Eastern Africa as a region is geographically defined by 20 territories: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan are members of the East African Community and are included in the African Great Lakes region. Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia are located at the Horn of Africa.
Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles are small island nations in the Indian Ocean, geographically also part of Eastern Africa. Reunion and Mayotte are French overseas territories and are also part of the region, while Mozambique and Madagascar are often considered part of Southern Africa on the eastern side of the sub-continent. Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe are often also included in Southern Africa, while Sudan and South Sudan are collectively part of the Nile Valley.
While the region is one of the fastest growing regions in the world, average social improvements accompany this growth. Life expectancy, for example, has increased by 5.3 years in the past decade. These developments come with new challenges, including the need for faster job creation for the growing population as well as fluctuating agricultural production due to climate change.
Despite these social improvements, poverty in the region still remains a big challenge, especially in its rural areas. Most countries in the region remain largely rural, with Ethiopia and Tanzania having the largest rural populations. Thus, issues which need particular attention in the East African region include the development of infrastructure, basic service provision and governance. The lack of basic services, especially relating to sanitation and hygiene, strengthens the occurrence and spread of communicable diseases. While the life expectancy in the region has also increased and is expected to increase multifold in the next decades, the occurrence of non-communicable diseases will also cause challenges for the region.
On the basis of this information, we aim to provide nuanced insight into the occurrence of CDs and NCDs in connection with poverty in this blog. With the region undergoing such developments in the coming decades, East Africa is an interesting region to learn more about and to understand the underlying mechanisms projected to cause socioeconomic advancements and challenges simultaneously.
