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Africa, which is composed of 53 independent nations, is home to around 956 million (as of 2007). In particular, Africa was home to 34 of the world’s 50 least developed countries listed by the OECD/DAC in 2007. Most of these impoverished countries are found in the Sub-Saharan African region, inhabited by 84% of Africa’s total population. Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be characterized by a high poverty rate and carries development’s most daunting challenges. Despite abundant resources, the capacity of fragile states and inadequate human resources, as well as frequent conflicts, are seen as the main causes of poverty in the region.
In 2006, according to the human development index, the average life expectancy in the Sub-Saharan African region is 49.9 years and the adult literacy rate is 62.1%. The average per capita gross national income (GNI) amounts to USD 1,873, and primary school enrollment is 50.3%. In addition, as of 2007, Sub-Saharan Africa remained the epicenter of AIDS, with 67% or 22 million of the world’s people living with HIV/AIDS from that region. Malaria also remained a primary cause of death in the region. From the latter half of 2007, many countries have become more competitive in the area of food security due to rising grain prices. As a result, developing countries have been experiencing many hardships. Due to this situation, achieving the MDGs in Africa by the deadline of 2015 will be very difficult.
African development has fallen into a so-called “poverty trap.” At the G-8 summit in July 2005 and the New York summit in September of the same year, leaders around the world renewed their commitment to scale up ODA for African countries and cancel debt for the least developed African countries in order to produce tangible results and progress toward meeting the MDG targets by 2015.
Korea has strengthened its development cooperation efforts toward African countries since the Korean president announced “Korea’s Initiative for Africa’s Development” in March 2006, and promised a three-fold increase in ODA from the 2005 level for African countries (or 20% of the ODA budget) by 2008. Korea has continued to faithfully provide this aid, and has contributed to the achievement of the MDGs through projects aimed at combating diseases.
KOICA has provided support to Africa in terms of projects by focusing on improved health care environments, rural development, education, etc. These projects are aimed at fulfilling basic human needs, and active efforts are being made to meet various types of demand according to each country in the development areas of ICT, industry & energy, the environment, etc. KOICA is also making efforts to build the capacity of each African country by sharing Korea’s development experience through the expansion of training programs in Korea and the dispatching of Korea Overseas Volunteers (KOVs).
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KOICA administered 19.8% of its total budget or USD 54.6 million to support 48 countries in Africa, an increase of 28.8% from the USD 42.4 million in 2007. This drastic volume expansion can be seen as an achievement of the targets in the Korean Initiative for the Development of Africa, with the assistance reaching 3.8 times the 2005 level based on the Korean won.
Egypt remained the primary partner, receiving USD 7.5 million, followed by Tanzania and Ethiopia. The top five African partners received 8.5% of KOICA’s total project budget, or 43.0% of the budget allocated for Africa. In terms of priority sectors, health, education, rural development and ICT accounted for more than 67% of the total project budget for the region. |
| Top 5 African partner countries (Unit : US$ in thousands)
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| Assistance by Sectoral Priority in
Africa(USD in million)
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