Despite successes, Africa still failing in maternal health, says Okonjo-Iweala

Despite many successes recorded in Africa in terms of high growth numbers, investment inflows, among others, the continent is still failing in critical areas like maternal health and productivity while governments seem to lack the capacity to deliver essential services to the people, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, minister of finance and coordinating minister for the economy, admitted at the weekend.

Speaking at one of the sessions at the just-concluded 24th World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa in Abuja, Okonjo-Iweala said that Africa has had a lot of successes, not just failures, acknowledging, however, that high growth in Africa was not just enough for the level of inclusiveness that would make the required impact.

This was even as Carlos Lopes, under-secretary, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), cautioned Africa on the present high growth just being propelled by only commodity prices boom and internal consumption, without industrialisation.

Discussions at the plenary session centred on the theme ‘From 2015 to 2063: Accelerating Africa’s Transformation’.

“The one critical area where we are failing is on maternal mortality. I say that because we really do have answers to that. We know what to do, we have the technology, to make sure that women do not die in child birth, and yet we have high mortality numbers, including here in Nigeria,” Okonjo-Iweala said.

“I think that saving lives is vital. There is no reason a woman should die in child birth today because it is something easily tackled,” she said.

She said as the continent moved towards 2015, maternal mortality was one of those areas that had been agreed that were not accomplished under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adding, “We do not have any excuse, along with infant mortality.”

Another area where the continent lagged behind, according to the minister, was in driving inclusiveness, admitting that the leaders, unfortunately, had not focused on the issue of inequality with the needed kind of effort, even as the continent continued to rise.

“For instance, even as we are growing rapidly, our Gini Coefficient that measures inequality has also been increasing,” she said, adding that across Africa, Nigeria was least at 0.49.

The minister said the continent was also not doing well with regard to the quality of growth which, according to her, had to be improved, suggesting, therefore, that there was need to look at those sectors which had the potential to employ more people on the continent, like agriculture.

Okonjo-Iweala said all of these were wrapped up in an analysis that McKinsey had just done on Nigeria, which also illustrated what was happening in Africa. The survey showed that whilst Nigeria was growing, there was a productivity gap, made up of infrastructure gap, skills gap, weak government delivery worsened by weak institutions to deliver essential services to the people, she said.

The minister at the meeting also suggested that Africa’s growth rate was not good enough and wondered what level of growth rate would be comfortable for the continent towards 2063.