New Nations Emerge: The Challenges Facing Africa

1. New Nations Emerge: The Challenges Facing Africa

2. Epidemics in Africa • Probably the most pressing disease in today’s world is the HIV-AIDS epidemic because of the number of infected persons, the ease of transmission and no known cure • The virus can be transmitted through contact with infected blood, semen, or vaginal fluids. • Within a few weeks of HIV infection, flu-like symptoms such as fever, sore throat, and fatigue can occur. Then the disease is usually asymptomatic until it progresses to AIDS. AIDS symptoms include weight loss, fever or night sweats, fatigue, and recurrent infections. • No cure exists for AIDS, but strict adherence to anti-retroviral regimens (ARVs) can dramatically slow the disease's progress as well as prevent secondary infections and complications

3. Epidemics in Africa • Ebola: an infectious and generally fatal disease marked by fever and severe internal bleeding, spread through contact with infected body fluids, whose normal host species is unknown. • Cholera: bacteria in water causes high fever, intense vomiting and diarrhea, deadly if not treated • Dysentery: bacteria in water or food causes intense diarrhea, ruptures in intestines, stool filled with blood and mucus, deadly if not treated • Malaria: parasite transmitted by mosquitoes, attacks red blood cells, causes high fever that cooks your brain in its own fluid, deadly if not treated but is preventable before you get it, if infected you have it for life • Yellow Fever: viral infection spread by mosquitoes, virus attacks your liver and kidneys causes extreme jaundice, deadly but is preventable before you get it, if infected you have it for life

4. Blood Diamonds • Many of the world's diamonds are mined using practices that exploit workers, children, and communities. A million diamond diggers in Africa earn less than a dollar a day. Miners are dying in accidents, child labor is widespread, and corrupt leaders are depriving diamond mining communities of funds badly needed for economic development. • Diamond miners who work in small-scale mining – panning or digging for diamonds – produce about 15% of the world’s diamonds. But their wages do not reflect the value of their work. PovertyAn estimated one million diamond diggers in Africa earn less than a dollar a day. This unlivable wage is below the extreme poverty line. As a result, hundreds of thousands of miners lack basic necessities such as running water and sanitation. Hunger, illiteracy, and infant mortality are commonplace. Even within developing countries, diamond mining communities are often the most impoverished

5. The Rwandan Genocide • From April to July 1994, members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east-central African nation of Rwanda murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority. Begun by extreme Hutu nationalists in the capital of Kigali, the genocide spread throughout the country with staggering speed and brutality, as ordinary citizens were incited by local officials and the Hutu Power government to take up arms against their neighbors. By the time the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front gained control of the country through a military offensive in early July, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were dead and many more displaced from their homes. The RPF victory created 2 million more refugees (mainly Hutus) from Rwanda, exacerbating what had already become a full-blown humanitarian crisis. • The mass killings in Rwanda quickly spread from Kigali to the rest of the country, with some 800,000 people slaughtered over the next three months. During this period, local officials and government-sponsored radio stations called on ordinary Rwandan civilians to murder their neighbors. Meanwhile, the RPF resumed fighting, and civil war raged alongside the genocide. By early July, RPF forces had gained control over most of country, including Kigali. In response, more than 2 million people, nearly all Hutus, fled Rwanda, crowding into refugee camps in the Congo (then called Zaire) and other neighboring countries.

6. Joseph Kony and the Invisible Children • For nearly 30 years, a warlord named Joseph Kony has terrorized East and central Africa. He has kidnapped over 30,000 children to strengthen his army, forcing the boys to become soldiers and the girls to become sex slaves. Kony instructs the members of his LRA to abduct, threaten, destroy, and murder in the name of his spiritual powers. • In central Africa, there are currently hundreds of thousands of people displaced because of LRA violence, and many of those who remain in their communities live in fear of the rebel group. Thousands of families have children missing from the decades of armed conflict, unsure if their loved ones are dead or alive. • Joseph Kony is the self-appointed ‘messiah’ of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and oversees the rebel group responsible for Africa’s longest running armed conflict. After spending 20 years in Uganda, the LRA now operate in small, mobile groups across central Africa.

7. Anti-Government Groups in Africa • Anti-Government Groups: • Al Shabaab • Boko Haram