Facts: Women, Trade and Development in Africa
July 2, 2003 National Press Club Briefing

The developing world's highest poverty rates are found in some of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where the World Bank says two in every five people exist on less than $1 per day.1 It is no coincidence that the rate of population growth in these same countries is among the world's highest-2.8 percent per year-and that none of them afford women equal access to education, training, employment, credit or political participation.

At the same time, women do most of Africa's food production and perform two-thirds of the hours worked, yet reap less than a quarter of the pay and own less than one percent of the property.2 Aid programs need to be translated into gender-conscious community-level programs that recognize and support women's contribution to the economic system.

• Lack of education for women in the region is a major factor-more than 50 percent of women are illiterate, and it's getting worse: the literacy rate has declined from 63 percent in 1980 to less than 50 percent in 2000.1
• The correlation between poverty and high fertility rates is most marked in sub-Saharan Africa, where the total fertility rate (TFR, or number of children each woman bears on average) is 5.6 and the gross national income per capita (GNI per capita, adjusted for purchasing power) is US $1,540, the lowest by far of any major region. Conversely, Western Europe has a GNI per capita of US $25,300 and a TFR of 1.5.3
• Africa has about 80 million of the world's 250 million child laborers.4
• Women account for more than 60 percent of the agricultural labor force in Africa and contribute up to 80 percent of total food production. But they get less than 10 percent of the credit that goes to small farmers.5
• In 1990, multilateral banks allocated $5.8 billion for rural credit to developing countries; only five percent of that reached rural women.5
• Africa has a debt burden of $230 billion-the continent spends $14.5 billion each year servicing its debt. Many countries spend more on debt repayment than on education.6
• Only 12 percent of the roads in sub-Saharan Africa are paved, and only three percent of the population has access to a telephone line or mobile phone.7
• Women who work in the region's non-agricultural sector are 90 percent self-employed.2

Sources:
1. http://www.worldbank.org/afr/overview.htm
2. United Nations, The World's Women 2000, New York NY 2000, p. xvii
3. Carty, Win, "Poverty Fuels Developing World's High Birth Rate," www.prb.org, Aug. 2002
4. United Nations Human Development Report 2000, p. 41
5. United Nations Human Development Report 1995, p. 39
6. www.50years.org, www.datadata.org
7. www.developmentgoals.org

For more information, contact: Micheline Carter, 202/326-8710, or go to www.PLANetWIRE.org, a journalist Web site on global population and health.

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