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War Deprives Africa Of Much-Needed Cash

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By TODD PITMAN, The Associated Press

Published: October 11, 2007

DAKAR, Senegal - Africa's nearly two dozen wars in recent decades have robbed the continent of about $18 billion a year that could have gone to helping one of the world's poorest regions build stronger economies, according to a report being released today.

'This is money Africa can ill afford to lose,' Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf wrote in an introduction to the report by the British charity Oxfam and two groups that seek tougher controls on small arms, Saferworld and the International Action Network on Small Arms.

'The sums are appalling: the price that Africa is paying could cover the cost of solving the HIV and AIDS crisis in Africa, or provide education, water and prevention and treatment for tuberculosis and malaria,' Sirleaf added. 'Literally thousands of hospitals, schools, and roads could have been built.'

That war makes economies suffer is nothing new, but few have tried to estimate the real cost across Africa.

Compared with peaceful countries, war-battered African nations have '50 percent more infant deaths, 15 percent more undernourished people, life expectancy reduced by five years, 20 percent more adult illiteracy ... and 12.4 percent less food per person,' the report estimates.

On average, the economies of African nations wracked by armed conflict contracted by 15 percent and the effect generally worsened the longer a war lasted, the report said.

The report based its figures on the ill effects on economic growth by estimating what growth might have been in countries if they had not suffered conflicts. During Guinea-Bissau's 1989-99 war, for example, projected growth was 5 percent, but the economy decreased 10 percent, it said.

The report looked at 23 African nations that had wars between 1990 and 2005, estimating the fighting cost a total of about $300 billion.

'This is a massive waste of resources - roughly equivalent to total international aid to Africa from major donors during the same period,' the report said.

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