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Many people in Africa lack clean water and ways to be clean, safe, and healthy.

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Water's crucial role in accomplishing the continent's development goals is widely recognized. Africa faces endemic poverty, food insecurity and pervasive underdevelopment, with almost all countries lacking the human, economic and institutional capacities to effectively develop and manage their water resources sustainably. Thus, a large number of countries on the continent still face huge challenges in attempting to achieve the United Nations water-related Millennium Development Goals ( MDGs) .

Northern Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa even though in one continent, have made different levels of progress towards the Millennium Development Goal on water. North Africa has 92% coverage and is on track to meet its 94% target before 2015. However, Sub-Saharan Africa experiences a contrasting case with 40% of the 783 million people without access to an improved source of drinking water from the region. Sub-Saharan Africa is off track from meeting the MDG on water with just 61% water coverage and with the current pace cannot reach the 75% target set for the region.

An analysis of data from 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (representing 84% of the region's population) shows significant differences between the poorest and richest fifths of the population in both rural and urban areas. Over 90% of the richest quintile in urban areas use improved water sources, and over 60% have piped water on premises. In rural areas, piped-in water is non-existent in the poorest 40% of households, and less than half of the population use any form of improved source of water.
Drinking water coverage by wealth quintiles, urban and rural residence, sub-Saharan Africa, based on population-weight averages from 35 countries (percentage).
Africa is one of the two major regions with the least improvement in accomplishing the MDG on sanitation by 2015. Despite the fact that North Africa has 90% coverage, Sub-Saharan Africa has a startling 30% coverage with only a 4% increase from 1990. This is a serious concern because of the associated massive health burden as many people who lack basic sanitation engage in unsanitary activities like open defecation, solid waste disposal and wastewater disposal. The practice of open defecation is the primary cause of faecal oral transmission of diseasewith children being the most vulnerable.

Africa as a whole, especially Sub-Saharan Africa despite efforts and approaches to extend and sustain water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) systems and services has led to different health complications leading to death within the region. The water and sanitation position in West/Central Africa is of particular urgency, as the region has the highest under-ﬁve mortality rate of all developing regions: 191 child deaths per 1,000 live births. Recurrent outbreaks of cholera in both urban and rural areas underline the poor state of this region's basic living conditions.

Population growth and rural-urban migration

Africa's rising population is driving demand for water and accelerating the degradation of water resources in many countries on the continent. Among developing regions, Sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to have the highest prevalence of urban slums and it is expected to double to around 400 million by 2020. Despite the efforts of some Sub-Saharan African countries and cities to expand basic services and improve urban housing conditions. Rapid and unplanned urban growth has increased the number of settlements on unstable, flood-prone, and high-risk land where phenomena such as landslides, rains, and earthquakes have devastating consequences.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the world's poorest and least developed region, with half its population living on less than a dollar a day. About two-thirds of its countries rank among the lowest in the Human Development Index. Even when opportunities exist to address outstanding water issues, deep and widespread poverty across the African region constrains the ability of many cities and communities to provide proper water and sanitation services, sufficient water for economic activities and to prevent water quality from deteriorating.

Africa faces a situation of economic water scarcity, and current institutional, financial and human capacities for managing water are lacking. The situation is exacerbated by competition for public funding between sectors, and heavy public debt burdens in most countries.
In Africa, financing is insufficient and the institutional capacity to absorb what is available is limited. The danger of slippage to already made progress against the MDG on water and sanitation is real. Most countries within the continent are falling short to sustainWater Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) commitments, with over 80% of countries reportedly falling significantly behind the trends required to meet their defined national access targets for sanitation and drinking-water. There is insufficient domestic financing for WASH overall with particularly serious shortfalls for sanitation. This is exacerbated by difficulties in spending the limited funds that are received.

One other challenge Africa faces is lack of coordination among authorities, stemming from an unclear definition of roles and responsibilities, coupled with lack of harmonization of laws and policies related to environmental management. Inadequate staffing in government departments that handles environmental issues is another factor in the downward trend in environmental sustainability in some countries within the continent.

Varied climate and natural hazards

Africa's climate is characterized by extremes, from a humid equatorial climate at the equator, through tropical and semi-arid in the middle of the region, to an arid climate towards the northern and southern fringes. Sub-Saharan Africa has a relatively plentiful supply of rainwater, but it is highly seasonal, unevenly distributed across the region and there are frequent floods and droughts. Drought is the dominant climate risk in sub-Saharan Africa. It destroys economic livelihoods and farmers food sources and has a significant negative effect on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in one-third of the countries.

In 2010, the share of the urban population with access to an improved water source ranged from 52% (Mauritania) to 100% (Egypt, Mauritius, Niger and Seychelles). The number of countries with at least 80% access to an improved water source in urban areas climbed from 26% in 1990 to 38% in 2010. In 2010, no country had a coverage rate of less than 50%, an improvement from four countries with less than 50% coverage in 1990. Coverage varied widely in 2010, from 7% in Somalia to 99% in Mauritius. The number of countries for which rural access was 80% or more rose from 5% in 1990 to 10% in 2010. Other good news was that the number of countries with less than 50% coverage fell from 27% to 16%.

Proportion of population using an improved sanitation facility is generally low - just 40% in 2010 and an increase of only 5 percentage points from 1990. As with improved drinking water supply, access to sanitation facilities shows a sharp contrast in urban and rural areas - in 2010, 54% and only 31%, respectively. However - again as with improved drinking water supply - urban areas actually recorded a decline in coverage from 1990's 57%, and again this can be attributed to the high proportion of slum dwellers in a fast expanding urban population. Rural areas saw slight progress, up from 25% in 1990.

In 2011, African countries reported substantive political commitments to WASH, increasing funding allocations, and leadership and coordination among implementing agencies. The majorities of countries have established transparent WASH service provision targets and have put in place supporting policies, and many monitor against these targets. Countries also confirm that the rights to water and sanitation are increasingly adopted in laws or policies.

Several countries have also committed to meeting their commitments made under other initiatives; for instance, Ethiopia has developed a plan to meet its sanitation commitment in line with the eThekwini Declaration.The Africa Water Vision 2025 has been adopted by African governments, the New Partnership for Africa's Development and the African Union. This is evidence of a new focus on water and, potentially, better-targeted investment and more efficient water management.

Africa is the world´s second-driest continent after Australia.

About 66% of Africa is arid or semi-arid and more than 300 of the 800 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in a water-scarce environment - meaning that they have less than 1,000 m3 per capita per year.

115 people in Africa die every hour from diseases linked to poor sanitation, poor hygiene and contaminated water.

35% of Water and Sanitation aid commitment on MDG goes to Africa with Sub-Saharan having 27% of the financial allocation.

In Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, more than a quarter of the population spends more than half an hour per round trip to collect water.

Africa's rising population is driving demand for water and accelerating the degradation of water resources. By mid-2011, Africa's population (excluding the northern-most states) was around 838 million and its average natural rate of increase was 2.6% per year, compared to the world average of 1.2%. By one estimate its population will grow to 1,245 million by 2025 and to 2,069 million by 2050.

The urban slum population in sub-Saharan African countries is expected to double to 400 million by 2020 if governments do not take immediate and radical action.

Human values in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Education Programme (HVWSHE)
UN-Habitat has implemented the HVWSHE programme, as part of the Water for African and Asian Cities Programmes, to impart information on water, sanitation and hygiene and also inspire and motivate learners to change their behaviour and adopt attitudes that promote hygienic living and wise and sustainable use of water.

Lake Victoria Region Water and Sanitation Initiative
In 2004, UN-Habitat, in association with the Governments of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda launched a major initiative to address the water and sanitation needs of the population, particularly the poor, in the secondary urban centres around Lake Victoria. The Lake Victoria Region Water and Sanitation Initiative (LVWATSAN) is supporting participating governments to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for water supply and sanitation, with emphasis on innovative solutions and speedy delivery.

Water and Sanitation Trust Fund (WSTF)
The WSTF, which was established in 2003, aims to leverage new investment and ideas to expand the water and sanitation (WATSAN) service coverage for poor urban dwellers and help build momentum for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with a strategic plan for 2008-2012.

Water for African Cities
The Water for African Cities Programme, initiated in December 1999, facilitates the adoption of measures to ensure access to environmentally sound water and sanitation service provision to the unserved, as well as improved access for underserved populations of the target cities. Through demonstration projects and capacity building interventions carried out in collaboration with national partners, regional and international financial institutions, the programme supports water supply and sanitation utilities, local governments, NGOs and communities to leverage resources for scaling up and replication at the country level.

Water and Sanitation Program (WSP): Economic Sanitation Initiative-Africa
Launched in 2007, the WSP Economic Sanitation Initiative in Africa draws attention to how good sanitation policies and practices can underpin socio-economic development and environmental protection by an estimation of economic impacts on populations without access to improved sanitation in order to provide information on the losses to society of the current sanitation situation.

Mainstreaming Gender in the Irrigation Development Support Programme - Case Study Zambia
World Bank. February 2014
This case study describes the integration of women producers into agricultural investment programs in Zambia as well as how women's right to land influences women as it relates to the Irrigation Development Support Programme (IDSP) in Zambia. The study discusses the projects aim to develop irrigated agricultural land managed by smallholders, including emergent farmers and making sufficient water available to support large-scale commercial operations. It is comprised of two interlinked studies, the first in the internal paper "Integrating Women Producers and Their Organizations into Agricultural Investment Programmes in Zambia (and Mali)" and a follow-up study entitled "Women's Land Ownership and Compensation Study in Zambia."

Do pro-poor policies increase water coverage? An analysis of service delivery in Kampala's informal settlements
World Bank. January 2014
This study examines the extent to which the national public water authority responsible for service delivery in Uganda's towns and cities - National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) - has been implementing a raft of policies explicitly focused on improving delivery of services to the urban poor. The study assesses the impact of pro-poor measures implemented by NWSC in Kampala since 2004, identifies the key factors that affected the outcomes of these policies and strategies, proposes areas for improvement, and identifies lessons that can be learned and shared from the experience in Uganda. The primary purpose of the case study is to expand the scope and increase the effectiveness of NWSC's pro-poor policy which is described in the summary. The report is divided into the following six chapters: chapter one gives the introduction of the report and presents the objectives and methods used. Chapter two presents an overview of the water sector in Kampala, including the legal, institutional, and regulatory framework, a definition of poverty in Kampala and what this means for poor households. Chapter three describes the urban water sector policy and the strategy developed by the NWSC to expand services and improve financial performance. Chapter four analyzes in detail the impact of NWSC policies and water supply delivery mechanisms on services to poor households in Kampala. Chapter five contains the conclusions of the study. Chapter six contains recommendations for further analysis which can be undertaken by the NWSC, the Government of Uganda, and/or the World Bank.

Assessing Progress in Africa toward the Millennium Development Goals. MDG Report 2013. Food security in Africa: Issues, challenges and lessons
African Union Commission (AUC), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), African Development Bank (AfDB), United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP). May 2013
As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target date of 2015 approaches, this report takes stock of Africa's progress. This 2013 MDG report reveals a mixed pattern-successes and failures, improvements and challenges, innovations and obstacles. The report summarizes Africa's MDG performance and identifies the best performing countries by indicator. Information about Target 7C: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, as well as on factors hindering progress in access to safe drinking water and sanitation is provided. Section III focuses this edition on the issue of food security in Africa, presents the situation and success stories and emerging lessons at country level, including issues related to water supply and irrigation.

GLAAS Report 2012: Africa Highlights[ - 3.9 MB]
UN-Water, World Health Organization (WHO). April 2012
A document of UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) which focuses on Africa's challenge of extending and sustaining services.

MDG Report 2012: Assessing Progress in Africa toward the Millennium Development Goals. Emerging perspectives from Africa on the post-2015 development agenda[ - 8 MB]
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 2012
This document tracks the rate of progress on several MDG-related indicators, including "access to a water source" and "improved sanitation". The report highlights difficulties hampering progress like lack of political will, pressure on environmental resources to support economic growth, weak governance and planning frameworks, and a lack of financial resources. It also describes emerging perspectives from Africa on the post-2015 development agenda.

A Snapshot of Drinking Water and Sanitation in Africa - 2012 Update[ - 14.3 MB]
African Ministers' Council on Water (AMCOW) in collaboration with the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation. 2012
This Snapshot of Drinking Water and Sanitation in Africa - 2012 update document, aims to inform senior policy makers about the status and trends in progress towards achieving the MDG drinking-water and sanitation target in Africa. It is a contribution of the African Ministers' Council on Water (AMCOW) to the fourth African Water Week (Cairo, 15-16 May 2012) which brings together senior officials from across the continent to review and discuss the challenges and priorities in the acceleration of providing access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The estimates presented in this document are derived from data collected by national statistics offices and other relevant institutions through national censuses and nationally representative household surveys.

Africa Water Atlas
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). 2010
This Atlas is a visual account of Africa's endowment and use of water resources, revealed through 224 maps and 104 satellite images as well as some 500 graphics and hundreds of photos. However the Atlas is more than a collection of static maps and images accompanied by informative facts and figures: its visual elements illustrate a succinct narrative describing and analyzing Africa's water issues and exemplifying them through the use of case studies. It gathers information about water in Africa and its role in the economy and development, health, food security, transboundary cooperation, capacity building and environmental change into one comprehensive and accessible volume.
>> Access most recent publications on Africa from the UN Documentation Centre on Water and Sanitation
Sources:

Africa Water Atlas. UNEP, 2010.

Africa Water Vision 2025: Equitable and Sustainable Use of Water for Socioeconomic Development. UNECA, 2009.

Agriculture at a Crossroads: International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. Global Report. UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, World Bank, WHO, 2009s.

Assessing Progress in Africa toward the Millennium Development Goals- MDG Report 2012. UNDP, 2012.

The Challenge in Disaster Reduction for the Water and Sanitation Sector: improving quality of life by reducing vulnerabilities. UNISDR, 2006.

The Challenge of Extending and Sustaining Service, GLAAS Report 2012. UN-Water, WHO, 2012.

The Challenge of Extending and Sustaining and Drinking-Water: Africa Highlights, GLAAS Report 2012. WHO, UN-WATER, 2012.

Facts and figures from WWDR4. UNESCO, UN-Water, WWAP, March 2012.

Facts and figures: Water, sanitation and hygiene links to health. WHO, 2012.

Fact file: 10 facts on Sanitation. WHO, 2011.

Human Development Reports: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the Human Development Index (HDI). UNEP, 2011.

Managing Water under Uncertainty and Risk. The United Nations World Water Development Report 4, Vol. 1. UNESCO, UN-Water, WWAP, March 2012.

The Millennium Development Goals Report 2010. United Nations, June 2010.

The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012. United Nations, July 2012.

Progress on drinking water and sanitation: 2012 update. UNICEF/WHO JMP, March 2012.

Progress of sanitation and drinking-water: 2010 update. Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water and Sanitation. WHO/UNICEF JMP, 2010.

The eThekwini Declaration and AfricaSan Action Plan: 11th African Union Summit on Meeting the Millennium Development Goals on Water and Sanitation. WSP-Africa, 2008.

(A) snapshot of Drinking Water and Sanitation in Africa. 2012 Update. AMCOW WHO/UNICEF JMP, 2012.

What are slums and why do they exist? 21st Session of the Governing Council. 16-20 April 2007, Nairobi, Kenya. UN-Habitat, April, 2007.

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Africa | International Decade for Action 'Water for Life' 2005-2015

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Water's crucial role in accomplishing the continent's development goals is widely recognized. Africa faces endemic poverty, food insecurity and pervasive underdevelopment, with almost all countries lacking the human, economic and institutional capacities to effectively develop and manage their water resources sustainably.

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There are many different climate zones in Africa such as forests, deserts, and savanna.

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The Sahara Desert is the biggest hot desert in the world and has extreme conditions. It stretches into many African nations.

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The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert and one of the harshest environments on the planet. It is third largest desert overall after Antarctica and the Arctic, which are cold deserts.

At 3.6 million square miles (9.4 million square kilometers), the Sahara, which is Arabic for "The Great Desert," engulfs most of North Africa. The desert covers large sections of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia.

This is the image many people have of the Sahara: a vast sea of sand dunes. The terrain is actually quite varied.

Credit: apdesign ShutterStock

The Sahara is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the western edge, the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Red Sea on the east, and the Sudan and the valley of the Niger River on the south. The Sahara is divided into western Sahara, the central Hoggar (Ahaggar) Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Air Mountains, an area of desert mountains and high plateaus, Ténéré desert and the Libyan desert, which is the most arid region.

In the north, the Sahara reaches to the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt and portions of Libya. In Cyrenaica and the Maghreb, the Sahara experiences a more Mediterranean climate with a winter rainy season.

Major cities located in the Sahara include Cairo, Egypt; Tripoli, Libya; Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania; Tamanrasset, Ouargla, Bechar, Hassi Messaoud, Ghardaia, and El Oued in Algeria; Timbuktu in Mali; Agadez in Niger; and Faya-Largeau in Chad.

Climate and geography of the Sahara

The Sahara's northeasterly winds can reach hurricane level and often give rise to sand storms and dust devils. Half of the Sahara receives less than an inch of rain per year, and the rest receives up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) per year. The infrequent rain is usually torrential.

The highest peak in the Sahara is the volcano Emi Koussi (11,204 feet or 3,415 meters) in the Tibesti Mountains in northern Chad. The desert's other mountains and mountain ranges include the Aïr Mountains, Hoggar (Ahaggar) Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tibesti Mountains, Adrar des Iforas and the Red Sea hills.

The Hoggar Mountains in Algeria are in the central Sahara.

Credit: Pichugin Dmitry ShutterStock

Many people imagine the Sahara as dotted with sand dunes, and the desert does have its share of ergs, which are large areas of shifting sand dunes, with some of some of them reaching 590 feet (180 meters). However, most of the Sahara is characterized as rocky hamada, a type of desert landscape that has very little sand and is made up of primarily barren, hard, rocky plateaus.

With the exception of the Nile River, the Sahara's rivers and streams are irregular or seasonal. The Nile crosses the desert from its origins in central Africa to empty into the Mediterranean.

The central part of the Sahara has extremely limited vegetation. The northern and southern reaches of the desert, along with the highlands, have areas of sparse grassland and desert shrub, with trees and taller shrubs.

The Addax nasomaculatus, also known as the screwhorn antelope, is the Sahara's largest indigenous mammal

Credit: S1001 ShutterStock

Animals of the Sahara

Thousands of years ago, the Sahara had enough water so that people and animals were able to survive on the edge of the desert. There is evidence that the area was able to sustain river animals such as crocodiles. Fossils of dinosaurs, including Afrovenator, Jobaria and Ouranosaurus, have also been discovered in the desert.

Prehistoric rock paintings also depict cattle, giraffes, elephants and lions that roamed a once-lush Sahara.

Today, there is little water or vegetation to sustain life in most part of the Sahara. Some exceptions include the Nile Valley, a few oases, and the northern highlands, where Mediterranean plants such as the olive tree are found to grow. The change occurred in about 1600 B.C., after shifts in the Earth's axis increased temperatures and decreased precipitation.

Camels, most often associated with the Sahara, were introduced to the desert around 200 A.D. Their advantages over the horses they replaced include soft feet that are aligned so that they can move quickly and easily through sand and their ability to go for up to 17 days without food or water.

The venomous deathstalker scorpion can be 4 inches in length.

Credit: Ester Inbar

Rodents, snakes and scorpions thrive in the desert environment. The desert is home to the deathstalker scorpion, which can be nearly 4 inches (10 cm) in length. Its dangerous venom contains large amounts of agitoxin and scyllatoxin.

Among the 40-plus species of rodents in the Sahara is the jerboa, related to the mouse, rat and squirrel. To keep cool, the jerboa burrows underneath the desert's sands to more humid soils.

The Addax nasomaculatus, also known as the screwhorn antelope, is the Sahara's largest indigenous mammal. It travels in small herds throughout the Western Sahara, Mauritania and Chad. Instead of drinking water, it sucks moisture from the desert grasses and bushes. Its oversized hooves make the addax adept at moving through the Sahara's loose sand.

Jackals and several types of hyenas are among the carnivores that roam the Sahara. Weighing less than 3 pounds (1.4 kg), the Mall Fennec Fox is another carnivore that makes its home in tunnels in the sand dunes during the day and comes out at night to prey on the rodents.

- Kim Ann Zimmermann

Related:

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The Sahara: Facts, Climate and Animals of the Desert

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The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert and one of the harshest environments on the planet. It is third largest desert overall after Antarctica and the Arctic, which are cold deserts. At 3.6 million square miles (9.4 million square kilometers), the Sahara, which is Arabic for "The Great Desert," engulfs most of North Africa.

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Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa, had a huge influence on Africa and the world

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Nelson Mandela, who led a revolution against injustice from a prison cell and who overthrew history by turning his back on violence, is dead. He was 95 years old.

Most of us saw him for the last time when South Africa hosted the World Cup in 2010.

Mr. Mandela, an amateur boxer and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, rose from poverty and obscurity to defeat the white minority rule of apartheid and become the president of South Africa. Known now to everyone everywhere, one of the best men of a bad century, he fills four or five shelves of world biography. Read everything and you'll still struggle to understand his impossible courage. Start here.

As we've done with only a handful of public figures before him, we think of Mandela not only as a player on some distant global stage, but as a marker of our own personal experience, integral to any reminiscence of who we were and are and how we came to be.

Mandela went to prison for his politics two years before the Beatles played on "Ed Sullivan." He was released from prison the week Madonna shot the video for "Vogue." Locked up, he still convinced two generations of us to march against apartheid. This we did every step of four decades behind Mandela. And Tutu. And Biko.

We spend a lot of time in the sports business making metaphors and symbols out of athletes and their achievements. We build heroes and role models from money and numbers and mud and straw. But Mr. Mandela was the thing itself. We owe him an inexpressible debt.

In partial payment, some thoughts from my colleagues and friends. From Jemele Hill, a warm remembrance of a cold night spent waiting in Johannesburg. From Jackie MacMullan, how Mandela's alchemy turned hate into love.

Rick Reilly on Soweto, hopeless then and rising now. A goodbye from activist and author Richard Lapchick. A photo gallery. Gabriele Marcotti on the founding of the Robben Island prison soccer league, and Johnette Howard on apartheid as a state of mind. Scoop Jackson and Mandela the fighter. Kevin Powell and what "South African" means to "African-American." Bonnie Ford on a long-gone June in Motown, and Wright Thompson on the persistence of memory and hope.

Nelson Mandela Day is July 18.

A decade after Steven Van Zandt's 1985 " Sun City," South Africa hosted and won the Rugby World Cup. Today a new generation of young people know Nelson Mandela mostly as a movie hero. The poem for which that film is named -- and which Mandela recited night after night in prison -- was written by William Ernest Henley.

" Invictus"

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Somehow always ahead of us and behind us urging us on, Nelson Mandela's greatest gifts were his strength and his bravery and his empathy, the depth and the breadth of his understanding. His capacity for change. For growth. And his unwavering faith in the rest of us. He is forever the example he set, the symbol of the light that comes from darkness, of a love that overwhelms hate. If, in the 20th century Mr. Gandhi was our great soul, Mr. Mandela was our inextinguishable spirit.

Nelson Mandela has gone ahead of us. He leads us still.

Waiting for Mandela

I remember being cold. Really, really cold.

My legs were wrapped in a blanket, but my knees still shook. The tips of my fingers were wrinkled and numb. The chill wrapped around my bones like an uncompromising vine.

Only two things kept me from becoming a human Popsicle that night three years ago in suburban Johannesburg -- the rapid, anxious beating of my heart, and my imagination.

There were so many rumors that day about whether Nelson Mandela would officially stamp South Africa's historic hosting of the 2010 World Cup with an appearance at the final at Soccer City, the 89,000-seat stadium that served as the pulse of the World Cup.

Had Mandela opted not to appear, everyone would have understood. His 13-year-old great-granddaughter had died in a car accident following a World Cup concert before the opening ceremonies, which Mandela understandably chose not to attend.

Selfishly, I wanted to see him. This was the reason I came to South Africa. All I needed was a glimpse of one of the most brilliant men who ever lived. As much as I'd succumbed to the charismatic spell of the country, my trip would have felt incomplete had I not seen Mandela.

There is something surreal and frankly, unnerving, about being in the presence of someone who is an icon - and not in the way Jay-Z is an icon. I fantasized about what it might be like to be in the same room as someone who changed humanity. For the generation that preceded mine, this is what it must have been like to live at the same time as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I'd read several books about South Africa in preparation for my trip. I wanted to understand its history, its flaws, its culture, its maturation, and the connective tissue that binds its beautiful citizens together.

One of the books I read was Mandela's 1994 autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom," which covered his 27 years in prison for being a member of the outlawed African National Congress party, and his vigilant fight against oppression and apartheid - racial segregation that was enforced by South African law from 1948 to 1994.

I certainly was familiar with Mandela's inspirational story before I read his autobiography, but understanding Mandela's private thoughts and emotions made my entire experience in South Africa more vivid and powerful. I was seeing the country through his eyes, as well as my own.

So on this cold night in Soccer City stadium, seeing Mandela in person easily became the most priceless moment of my life.

As I process Mandela's death and this time of mourning, I can still summon every emotion I felt and recall every moment as he rode around the sold-out stadium on a golf cart, letting his people know that despite his own personal loss -- during such a celebratory time across the country -- he would always be theirs and always be there for them.

I'm not sure another world leader has ever had a relationship as special and spiritual as the one Mandela shares with the people of South Africa. That's been clear forever, and it certainly was on display that night.

I can still hear their cheers, the annoying buzz of the vuvuzelas and the chants of "Madiba" -- Mandela's clan name.

I still remember standing on numb feet, applauding with a choked throat as Mandela waved to the crowd, and his smile provided an even brighter light in the frigid air. My emotion wasn't that of sadness, but appreciation.

My heart still is full with the knowledge that if it weren't for Mandela's service and actions, we would be missing a prominent example of dignity, compassion and sacrifice.

I also feel guilty for a morbid thought I had that night. Mandela was 91 years old at the time and I couldn't help wondering: How much longer would we be able to see Mandela like this? How much time did we have left with him?

The real answer was that we never had enough time with Mandela. But that doesn't mean he won't always be a part of all of us.

A divisive symbol unites

Conflict routinely roiled South Africa until Nelson Mandela emerged as the voice of calm. He coaxed reconciliation, embraced forgiveness, refusing to be consumed by bitterness. He was an optimist, even after being imprisoned for 27 years for the "crime" of pushing to bring about social change in his native country.

He knew what moved his people and sought to unite a country paralyzed by deep racial tensions.

Mandela was not an avid rugby fan. In fact, he would confess years later, he wasn't entirely sure of all the rules. But one thing he did know: The rugby team was a polarizing entity, a symptom of what divided his country down to its very core.

The Rugby World Cup had been established in 1987, but South Africa's entry, the Springboks, did not compete in the inaugural competition or in the 1991 Cup because of anti-apartheid boycotts. The team's brilliant green-and-gold jerseys (not to mention its nearly all-white roster) represented everything the black population of South Africa despised.

In 1995, one year after he was named the first black president of South Africa, Mandela attended a Springboks match. As a former amateur boxer, he appreciated the spirit of competition and the camaraderie that developed among teammates, coaches and their fans.

Yet, as Mandela glanced around the stadium, he noticed that most of the patrons where white, while the few black spectators were hemmed into their own, separate area, cheering vociferously against their own country.

This, Mandela knew, had to change. South Africa was the host of the Cup later that year, and he wanted his country to be a harmonious presence on the national sports stage.

Over the months that followed, he met with the Springboks players and their coaches and developed a relationship with them. He worked tirelessly to break down barriers among his black supporters, convincing them the Springboks' motto of "One Team, One Country" could legitimately apply to all of them, not a handful of the elite.

The success of the Springboks galvanized South Africa. And, when they made it to the finals of the World Cup against New Zealand, Nelson Mandela chose that moment to appear in one of the team's trademark jerseys.

In doing so, he stunned both his loyal followers, who were so conditioned to hate the jersey, and his onetime detractors, who had been so conditioned to hate the man now wearing the jersey.

By the time Mandela left the stadium, his South African Springboks 15-12 victors in a major upset, the crowd of more than 60,000, both whites and blacks alike, stood and chanted, in unison: "Nelson, Nelson, Nelson!"

Nelson Mandela died on Thursday after a long illness. He was 95 years old, but lived long enough to see the dream he put into motion on that rugby field 18 years ago: a unified South Africa.

For that his people can thank their beloved agent of calm and reconciliation, who believed in the power of sport -- and the power of forgiveness.

Robben Island soccer

Nearly three years ago, Nelson Mandela, wrapped up against the winter cold, appeared on the pitch in Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium and waved to the 85,000-strong crowd assembled for the World Cup final. This was not a head of state emeritus simply engaging in a sporting ritual. This was the closing of a circle.

Mandela was 92 years old and had been ill. A few weeks earlier, he had buried his great-granddaughter. But once again, he felt he had to be there.

Father of the Rainbow Nation, Mandela was about to complete the successful hosting of the biggest event in sports, something that would never have happened without him. That was enough to brave the elements and push his frail body one more time. But there was another reason.

While not being a soccer enthusiast himself, Mandela felt a debt to the game and what it had meant to his comrades in the struggle against apartheid. For 18 years, Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists were imprisoned on Robben Island, a rock five miles and a million orders of magnitude away from the genteel streets of Cape Town, South Africa. As political prisoners, they had little to do but read what little they could get their hands on, let their minds dream and play soccer.

Thus was born the Makana Football Association, in part because one of the few books allowed on Robben Island was the FIFA handbook listing the Laws of the Game. The prisoners formed a league and played against each other. These weren't pickup games; this was proper, bureaucratized sports, with clubs and officials and referees and a commissioner. They kept meticulous records, and they wrote letters to each other to arrange games and kick-off times, even though they might just be in the next cell over. They mimicked normality through sports, both in the joy of playing and in the tedium of record-keeping.

The Makana FA existed on Robben Island for seven years, and everyone involved credits it for so much more beyond a means to blow off steam. It brought together educated intellectuals imprisoned for their beliefs with low-grade street criminals who could not read or write, as well as building a bridge between political activists of rival stripes. It maintained a routine that had nothing to do with physical survival yet had everything to do with mental survival.

Mandela, isolated in his 8-by-7-foot cell, was not allowed to play. Instead, he watched until the warden decided to build a wall outside only his window. And once it went up and he could no longer see, he imagined the players out there.

His people hadn't just built and operated a prison soccer league. They had laid the foundations for what was to come several decades later.

That's why Mandela was there on that cold July night at Soccer City. That's why he felt he owed it to his people and to the game that helped keep the struggle alive on Robben Island.

Powerful decisions

Nelson Mandela confounded his own supporters at times with some sports stands he took after he was freed from a brutal prison stay that included forced labor and became the first black president in his country's post-apartheid age. Sometimes, the fact that he was yet another world leader who trifled with sports at all was questioned. But Mandela had his reasons. And they go straight to the most powerful but counterintuitive lesson of his extraordinary life.

Why, Mandela was asked, did he do an about-face and support sending South Africa's first racially integrated team to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, though just eight of the 95-person delegation were black? And why did he more famously walk onto the field during the 1995 Rugby World Cup final between South Africa and New Zealand wearing the Springbok national team's green jersey, knowing that among blacks the traditionally all-white team had been a hated symbol of the country's racial oppression?

Mandela's answer always harked back to this: "As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison."

Sports weren't the only venue where Mandela taught us that apartheid could be a state of mind, not just a system enforced by a regime, and that to truly transcend the damage, both had to change.

But once you know that about him, it's easy to see why he considered himself a lifelong sports fan long after his days as an amateur boxer ended, or why he often said, "Sports has the power to change the world."

Mandela understood sports' power to deliver a message, level societal playing fields, and explode myths of racial superiority/inferiority. One of his most prickly challenges was creating a new South Africa where everyone felt they belonged. He knew the value of sports as a source of pride, an important escape hatch, a ladder out of isolation and deprivation.

Funny as it sounds, other quotes attributed to Mandela over the years -- "A winner is a dreamer who never gives up ... One cannot be prepared for something while secretly believing it will not happen" -- could've just as easily been uttered by Vince Lombardi or John Wooden.

Sports were one of the many areas in South African life where blacks and whites were completely segregated when Mandela walked out of prison on Feb. 11, 1990. The country had been boycotted by a great deal of the world's sports community for decades before he was elected to power in 1994.

But Mandela also knew that sports offer one of those places where integration could be swiftly achieved and held up as concrete proof of what was possible -- both to South Africans and to the rest of the world.

That's why there was inspired genius -- not just symbolism -- behind Mandela's startling decision to walk onto the field wearing the Springbok jersey that day at the world rugby championships.

It represented another prison door flung open without prejudice or bitterness.

The most powerful man in the country -- now a black man -- had just appropriated a potent symbol of white apartness and made it his own, rejecting whatever power it had before. And it was impossible to regard it the same way ever again.

The same is true of South Africa since Mandela.

Gloves on and off

In college, there were two pictures of Nelson Mandela that I kept with me. To me they told the comprehensive story of who he was, who he was to me.

One was of him as a boxer, the other of him as a fighter.

Back in the early '80s, when he was still on Robben Island, Mandela became a symbol to a generation of us who were in search for our own Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. The last was of somewhat greater significance to many of us because, through sports, we found liberators and agents of change. Jackie Robinson. Jim Brown. Bill Russell. Curt Flood. John Carlos and Tommie Smith. Arthur Ashe.

Ruben Carter's false imprisonment was less significant in comparison to Mandela's. As was Ali's much shorter stay.

Apartheid was the new slavery gone global. As children of America's civil rights movement who were too young to participate in initiating freedom and equality for our future, my peers and I latched on to the anti-apartheid movement as though the South African laws directly applied to us. With this, Mandela became more than a hero. The ANC was our NAACP and SNCC. It was an organization we fought for without being a part of.

Over the years, Mandela has evolved beyond a sports connection to embody human struggle, sacrifice and the importance of liberties.

We often get stuck thinking of him "doing 27 years in prison" and forget what he did prior to becoming my generation's living "Black Shining Prince." Over the years, the boxing photos in my house were replaced by books treated as bibles ("A Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela"; "Mandela's Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love and Courage" by Richard Stengel; "Nelson Mandela: A Biography" by Martin Meredith; "Conversations With Myself" by Nelson Mandela), speeches, news clips, magazines, Morgan Freeman and Sidney Poitier films, a future wall mural and two T-shirts. One shirt that has his prison number "46664" across the chest, the other with his clan name "Madiba" on the front, hidden in black on a black tee.

His Tao has become the template of man. Of how we should all aspire to live and lead even when/if our personal, cultural or societal circumstances don't reach the depths and heights of his.

I tell people all of the time: I named my son after Ali, but I'm raising him to be Mandela.

Because I've never forgotten that at the center of Mandela's life fight is a fighter. A man who we identified with as a boxer-turned-lawyer-turned-activist-turned-revolutionary. A man who used sports (rugby and more) as his country's own agent of change. Always a leader. For me, those pictures I kept of him reminded me what he once was and who he'd become. They bookended my understanding of what adopting a sport can do if justice is part of one's foundation. The difference between one who boxes and one who fights.

Black sports figures in America once seemed to always find their way to the forefront of the struggle. They symbolized our fight.

By the time I was in college, Mandela faced the tougher fight. Which made him bigger than life. Especially mine.

Changing lives a world away

I had never heard of Nelson Mandela, of South Africa, of apartheid, until I was an 18-year-old college freshman at Rutgers University in the mid-1980s. At that time I had no interest in politics, in community, and "democracy" was a very strange and elusive word to me, something we had been taught in American schools, but which felt like it belonged to the people in our textbooks, forever frozen in history. But there was something happening at Rutgers, and on campuses everywhere, called "the anti-apartheid movement," which was bringing together students of different races and cultures, in a way our country had not seen, I read and was told, since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Except this time the struggle for freedom was in a foreign land, a magical but terribly oppressive and violent place called South Africa, where the white minority had been ruling the black, "colored" and Indian majorities for many decades. And there was a leader, locked away with others in prison cells, in locales with names like Robben Island, for daring to oppose the white power structure of South Africa. I was both transformed and liberated as I learned about this man Mandela, as I joined the student protest and building takeover at my school directly challenging Rutgers' ties to corporations invested in the apartheid regime. I absorbed everything I could on Mandela, his speeches, his life story, the facts and mythologies. I was changed forever. Gone was the desire for a career merely to make money, replaced by a determination to live a life of service to others.

Mandela's influence on me lapsed between the time of my school's protests and my early 20-something life. But it was reignited when I watched the global broadcast when he was released, after 27 long years, on Feb. 11, 1990, and walked hand in hand with his then-wife Winnie Mandela from Victor Verster Prison. Iconic and transformational leaders like Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy were long gone. In Mandela we had a living and breathing example not simply of struggles for freedom and democracy, but also of someone who was willing and able to be a bridge-builder for humanity, like Gandhi, like Jesus Christ.

But let's also be clear: While Mandela is today widely viewed as a man of peace, he did advocate for self-defense and armed resistance against the brutal apartheid regime when he was first sent to jail in the early 1960s, and again in his first speech after walking away from that prison. Mandela was clear, just as America's founding fathers were, that freedom was not free.

Regardless, what captured my imagination and what will be one of Mandela's enduring gifts to humanity was his bottomless capacity to forgive his white oppressors and his openness to working with them for a new South Africa. Nothing in my lifetime prepared me for this post-prison Mandela. Nothing. The absence of bitterness from Mandela's words and demeanor was extraordinary to me, given that he lost 27 years of his life to prison.

In my still very young American and African-American mind of the 1990s this was the true revolution for humankind, to see each other as sisters and brothers, to be able to have honest conversations about the past, by way of South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission, so that there could be healing, yes, and an opportunity to move forward as one people.

This Mandela impacted my work greatly, and I went from being someone focused mostly on race issues to an activist and speaker who began, however difficultly, to embrace the lives and challenges of people everywhere no matter their race, gender, class, religion, ability or sexual orientation. In Mandela I saw a living and breathing example of what was possible, as a human being, as a man, as a leader, if only we could dig deeper into the reservoir of our spirits and find the capacity to love each other, to know each other, to get along with each other.

Sports was certainly central to Mandela's life. In his childhood he loved to run. Some of my favorite photos of him are the ones of Mandela in workout gear with boxing gloves on. While in prison he was held in isolation for much of his time. The famous stories are of Mandela watching the Robben Island soccer league, or hearing the retellings after a wall was built in front of his window.

Mandela would see sports as a way to unify South Africa into the "Rainbow Nation" his fellow South African freedom fighter Desmond Tutu called for once he was freed and eventually became South Africa's first black president of the post-apartheid era.

The 1995 Rugby World Cup, the 1996 African Cup of Nations in soccer, the 2003 Cricket World Cup and then the big one, the 2010 FIFA World Cup, were all played on South African soil. Those sporting events advanced the idea that if people could play and root together, then maybe, just maybe, people would acknowledge the evil of separating and dissing each other because of skin color.

Nelson Mandela is gone now, and I think about my own work here in America, of our first black president, Barack Obama, of how much race relations have changed in my nation because of sports just as sports dynamics affected Mandela's South Africa. But I also think about the ugly divides that still exist in my America, on our planet, of the still unequal and very violent South Africa that Mandela leaves behind. So much progress and yet so much more work to be done.

Finally, with profound sadness, we say goodbye to you, Mr. Nelson Mandela. I know the best way to honor you, Madiba, in your death, is for all of us to make a renewed commitment to come together, even where there are differences, for the sake of humanity. And if we can simply embody a fraction of the capacity for love, grace and unity that you possessed for nearly a century on this Earth, then our lives will be as victorious as yours.

-- Kevin Powell is an activist, public speaker, and author or editor of 11 books, including "Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, and The Ghost of Dr. King: Blogs and Essays." He is also the president of BK Nation, a new national and multicultural organization focused on civic engagement, leadership training, and volunteerism. Email him at kevin@kevinpowell.net or follow him on Twitter @kevin_powell

The roar of 'Motortown'

I was working rewrite on the Detroit News city desk on the night in June 1990 when Nelson Mandela electrified a full house at Tiger Stadium a few months after his release from prison. I'll never forget the whole-body shiver I felt when he read four lines from Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," saying they were "a reflection of the South African condition":

Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying

Charmingly, he reversed the order of the lyrics and referred to the hometown record label as "Motortown." The crowd roared mightily, pleased at the reference.

I didn't dwell on the significance of the venue. It was the only place in the city that could have held an event on that scale at the time. Looking back on it now, the fact that he spoke at the grand old stadium -- a place that at least fleetingly brought joy to a racially torn city when its baseball team won the 1968 World Series -- was so very fitting.

A heavyweight boxer in his youth, Mandela was a fitness devotee and a lifelong, avid sports fan, including the 27 years of his incarceration, much of it at Robben Island.

"Prisoners from the general section painted the cement surface green and then fashioned the traditional configuration of white lines," he wrote in his autobiography, "The Long Walk to Freedom." "A few days later, a net was put up, and suddenly we had our own Wimbledon in our front yard. I pursued the sport for exercise, not style ... I was a backcourt player, only rushing the net when I had a clean slam."

Mandela admired the sublime capabilities of elite athletes, and because of that passion, he understood the power of sports to call attention to a greater cause. He skipped his own presidential inauguration parties in 1994 and went to a soccer match instead, telling author and researcher Richard Lapchick he knew the country's athletes had suffered because of the international sporting boycotts that in turn accelerated political change.

Sporting icons Mandela welcomed into his life included Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, but his embrace was color-blind. When South African swimmer Penny Heyns set a world record in the 100-meter breaststroke in 1996, he invited her to a private tea. When she won the nation's first Olympic gold medal in 44 years, he sent her a message saying, "You have done our country proud. You are our golden girl."

Heyns competed at the Atlanta Games with a Springbok tattooed on her left shoulder. That didn't lessen Mandela's pride. The profile of a leaping gazelle had long been synonymous with an oppressively racist regime, but Mandela had already converted it for good by giving South Africa's rugby team his blessing to keep it. Sport transcended mere symbolism in Mandela's life. In return, he recognized that an old symbol could come to represent a nation's new soul.

Remembering: 'This is the field'

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Two years before the 2010 soccer World Cup, during a time of great hope, an old man walked down to the Cape Town harbor. Boats rocked in their moorings. The brine of the Atlantic filled the air.

"The sea smell reminds me of prison," Sedick Isaacs said, climbing on board a ferry for the short ride to Robben Island. He wore studious glasses and shirt sleeves. The camera-pointing tourists didn't look at him twice. None of them knew he spent 13 years on the island, jailed with his fellow freedom fighter Nelson Mandela.

Isaacs didn't say much on the ride over. He went back into his mind.

The ferry docked next to the same rusting blue boat that brought him here for the first time. He could still remember his last view of Cape Town, of the newspaper headlines announcing his fate, like he was reading his own obituary.

The tourists lined up to exit. A haze floated between them and the flat-topped Table Mountain and the cranes finishing the waterfront soccer stadium. With his hands behind his back, Isaacs walked upright onto Robben Island. Tourists followed the guides, winding toward Mandela's famous cell.

Isaacs slipped off in a different direction.

The path took him to the backside of the island, facing away from the city, up and to the left from the stone quarries where the sun permanently damaged Mandela's eyes. On a large rocky patch of land, rusting rugby pipes rose into the blue sky. The driftwood goals long ago fell down.

"This is the field," he said.

Isaacs helped organize the first soccer league on Robben Island. They played on Saturday. Three matches in the morning. Two in the afternoon. Mandela couldn't leave his cell to join the games, but he and the other isolated prisoners followed the action through secret communications and even managed to watch some of the games. Prison guards saw the danger in sports, the way they breathed hope into a place designed to destroy it. Hope was the only thing Mandela and his comrades had left. Hope could change South Africa. The guards built a wall so Mandela couldn't see the matches.

The prisoners organized six teams: the Gunners, the Vultures, the Lice, the Bush Bugs, the Dynamos, the Stars. Isaacs belonged to the Gunners. He wasn't good, but he loved to play, to run, to control the way the ball left his foot.

"It made us exist," he said.

On Sunday at church, the best storytellers recreated the games in great detail for those who couldn't watch. "It was all a big discussion," Isaacs said. "By Wednesday, it petered out, and by Thursday, the forthcoming matches were talked about. They carried us from week to week and month to month."

He left the field and headed toward a place of despair. From memory, he walked to a long, narrow room, the first door on the right. The walls were white and gray. The locks had been removed. He fell quiet, going further into his memory.

"I stayed in this cell," he said.

Isaacs left part of himself on the island. Footsteps echoed in the old prison blocks. He heard different things. A close friend of his died in the hall outside. His friend came back to him now, until Isaacs had remembered enough for one day.

He caught up with the group, who crowded near the heavy rocks on the coast. Couples posed for pictures around him. Isaacs crossed his arms and looked at the mountain and the cranes. Waves broke over the boulders, white foam spraying into the air. Five years from now, he and Mandela would both be dead, mourned by the shrinking brotherhood of men who lived the horror of Robben Island and by those for whom the place exists only in a distant, hazy past.

"It's like a bad dream," Isaacs said, staring across the water at a world he helped change, breathing in the salt air that always reminded him of prison.

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Nelson Mandela, who led a revolution against injustice from a prison cell and who overthrew history by turning his back on violence, is dead. He was 95 years old. Most of us saw him for the last time when South Africa hosted the World Cup in 2010. Mr. Mandela, an amateur...

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Poverty is a huge problem in Africa.

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How bad is poverty in Africa? The situation is improving, but Africa remains the poorest continent on Earth. But what many people may not know are the effects of poverty in Africa-including hunger, disease and a lack of basic necessities.

Leading Facts About Poverty in Africa

Seventy-five percent of the world's poorest countries are located in Africa, including Zimbabwe, Liberia and Ethiopia. The Central African Republic ranked the poorest in the world with a GDP per capita of $656 in 2016.

According to Gallup World, in 2013, the 10 countries with the highest proportion of residents living in extreme poverty were all in sub-Saharan Africa. Extreme poverty is defined as living on $1.25 or less a day. In 2010, 414 million people were living in extreme poverty across sub-Saharan Africa. According to the World Bank, those living on $1.25 a day accounted for 48.5 percent of the population in that region in 2010.

Approximately one in three people living in sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimated that 239 million people (around 30 percent of the population) in sub-Saharan Africa were hungry in 2010. This is the highest percentage of any region in the world. In addition, the U.N. Millennium Project reported that over 40 percent of all Africans are unable to regularly obtain sufficient food.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 589 million people live without electricity. As a result, a staggering 80 percent of the population relies on biomass products such as wood, charcoal and dung in order to cook.

Of the 738 million people globally who lack access to clean water, 37 percent are living in sub-Saharan Africa. Poverty in Africa results in more than 500 million people suffering from waterborne diseases. According to the U.N. Millennium Project, more than 50 percent of Africans have a water-related illness like cholera.

Every year, sub-Saharan Africa misses out on about $30 billion as productivity is compromised by water and sanitation problems. This amount accounts for approximately five percent of the region's gross domestic product (GDP), exceeding the total amount of foreign aid sent to sub-Saharan Africa in 2003.

Due to continuing violence, conflict and widespread human rights abuses, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that 18 million people are of concern to the agency, including stateless people and returnees.

Fewer than 20 percent of African women have access to education. Uneducated African women are twice as likely to contract AIDS and 50 percent less likely to immunize their children. Meanwhile, the children of African women with at least five years of schooling have a 40 percent higher chance of survival.

Women in sub-Saharan Africa are more than 230 times more likely to die during childbirth or pregnancy than women in North America. Approximately one in 16 women living in sub-Saharan African will die during childbirth or pregnancy; only one in 4,000 women in North America will.

More than one million people, mostly children under the age of five, die every year from malaria. Malaria deaths in Africa alone account for 90 percent of all malaria deaths worldwide. Eighty percent of these victims are African children. The U.N. Millennium Project has calculated that a child in Africa dies from malaria every 30 seconds, or about 3,000 each day.
- Jordanna Packtor
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10 Shocking Facts about Poverty in Africa | The Borgen Project

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How bad is poverty in Africa? The situation is improving, but Africa remains the poorest continent on Earth. But what many people may not know are the effects of poverty in Africa-including hunger, disease and a lack of basic necessities. Seventy-five percent of the world's poorest countries are located in Africa, including Zimbabwe, Liberia and Ethiopia.

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The Rwandan Genocide is where the Hutus killed the Tutsis in Africa.