Thread by @Noahpinion

1/So, because I'm so annoyed when people talk about the problems of "Sub-Saharan Africa", I wrote a post about one region of Africa that really is doing quite badly and needs a lot of help - the Sahel region.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

2/On a map of "multidimensional poverty" (which takes into account health, education, etc. as well as income), the Sahel region truly stands out as doing uniquely badly, even compared to other very poor regions in south central Africa.

3/Here are child mortality rates for the main Sahel countries, compared to Ghana (a nearby country that's doing much better):

4/And here are literacy rates (note that Nigeria does better than other Sahel countries, thanks to its highly literate non-Sahel southern regions):

5/And here's a detailed map of years of schooling (from vizhub.healthdata.org/lbd/education). Again, you can really see how the Sahel underperforms basically everywhere else.

6/The Sahel's poverty is compounded by another problem - thanks to overgrazing, continuous cropping, and deforestation, the region is turning into a desert.

The Sahara is creeping south.

wearewater.org/en/the-sahel-d…

7/And climate change only exacerbates this process.

pbs.org/wgbh/nova/arti…

8/Meanwhile, the region's population is exploding, and set to continue exploding, as it has the world's highest fertility rates.

9/As you might expect, all of this is already causing war and conflict in the region.

10/Deep poverty, environmental devastation, population explosion, and armed conflict.

The Sahel is truly facing a multidimensional crisis.

phys.org/news/2013-04-e…

11/Development agencies, foreign aid donors, and NGOs need to concentrate most of their firepower on the Sahel. And instead of simply throwing money at the region, they need to focus their spending on:
A) education
B) health
C) environmental protection

12/In a world where most developing countries (including many in Africa) are doing much better, the Sahel stands out as the exception - the last frontier of truly deep, intractable poverty. It needs help, and fast.

(end)

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…