CGD reports that "since 1990 Mali has more than quadrupled the percentage of kids finishing school, Ethiopia’s maternal mortality rate has plunged by 40 percent, and the ratio of Burkinabe with access to safe water has more than doubled to 72 percent".
Roving Bandit cheers Samaliland's development: "not content with democratic elections and biometric passports, [Somalilan]d is also likely to become the first nation to become a cashless society, due to expansion in mobile money transfers and retail payments."
Africa Can... celebrates progress made in Kenya and "the related much broader findings of the new book Emerging Africa: How 17 Countries Are Leading the Way by Steven Radelet, who demonstrates that the experiences of sub-Saharan African countries have been diverse and that many countries in the region have experienced steady economic growth, improved governance, and decreased poverty since the mid-1990s."
And Save the Children [HT: PNB] shows us that any amount of good news, however good, can still be manipulated into looking really bad: "Cambodia has seen a 32 percent drop in child mortality figures among the country’s "richest 20 percent", but only an 18 percent reduction in child mortality among the "poorest 20 percent"." Only 18 percent? Happy day! 18 percent reductions are great news.
They are happier with
Indonesia, the region’s giant where 16 percent of its 225 million people live below the poverty line, [which] has recorded "equitable progress," noted the 37-page report. The poorest 20 percent has seen child mortality figures drop by 29 percent, while the richest 20 percent has witnessed a nine percent decline. ... Singapore, has been singled out in a study by ‘The Lancet’, a British medical journal, as leading all countries in the world in child mortality rates, having reduced it by 75 percent since 1990.
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