Africa is experiencing some of the biggest falls in child mortality ever seen, anywhere.

It is, says Gabriel Demombynes, of the World Bank’s Nairobi office, “a tremendous success story that has only barely been recognised”. Michael Clemens of the Centre for Global Development calls it simply “the biggest, best story in development”. It is the huge decline in child mortality now gathering pace across Africa.

Three countries—Senegal, Rwanda and Kenya—have seen falls of more than 8% a year, almost twice the MDG rate and enough to halve child mortality in about a decade. These three now have the same level of child mortality as India, one of the most successful economies in the world during the past decade.

Kenya is a test case. It has cut the rate of infant mortality (deaths of children under one year old) by more than any other country. It has had healthy economic growth (4.8% a year in 2005-10) and a functioning democracy, albeit after horrendous post-election violence in 2008. But Mr Demombynes noticed something else: it increased the use of treated bednets from 8% of all households in 2003 to 60% in 2008. Using figures on the geographical variation of malaria, he calculated that half the overall drop in Kenya’s infant mortality can be explained by the huge rise in the use of ITNs in areas where malaria is endemic.

Bednets are often taken as classic examples of the benefits of aid, since in the past they were pioneered by foreign charities. Consistent with the view that aid is vital, Jeffrey Sachs, an American economist, recently claimed that a big drop in child mortality in his Millennium Villages project (a group of African villages that his Earth Institute of Columbia University, New York, is helping) is the result of large increases in aid to villagers. In fact, argues Mr Demombynes, the mortality decline in these villages was no better than in the countries as a whole.

The broad moral of the story is different: aid does not seem to have been the decisive factor in cutting child mortality. No single thing was. But better policies, better government, new technology and other benefits are starting to bear fruit. “This will be startling news for anyone who still thinks Africa is mired in unending poverty and death,” says Mr Clemens. But “that Africa is slipping quickly away.” Source: The Economist
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