Conference Concept NoteEmily Vargas-Baron
The ADEA ECD Working Group adheres to the 4 Cornerstones of the Consultative Group onEarly Childhood Care and Development:1.Start at the beginning: services for children 0 – 32.Get ready for success: services for children 3 – 63.Improve primary school quality: services for children 6 – 84.Include early childhood in policies: ECD policy support
Context and Rationale: Current ECD Challenges in Africa
Well over half of Africa’s 130 million children from birth to six years of age live in poverty andsuffer from multiple challenges that result in very high rates of developmental delay, malnutrition,chronic illness, and disability (UNICEF 2008). Furthermore, malnutrition is highly correlated withdevelopmental delays, and especially with poor cognitive development (Grantham-McGregor et al2007). The scourges of HIV/AIDS, malaria, endemic violent conflicts and severe poverty, affectyoung children and mothers the most. The region is expected to have over 18 million orphans by2010, due especially to HIV/AIDS and violent conflicts (UNAIDS, UNICEF and USAID, 2004).
As though the foregoing challenges were not enough, SSA is also reeling from thegrowing impact of the current global economic crisis. In Africa, the economic crisis isexacerbated by food, fuel, and climate crises that are impacting young SSA children and parents the most
.
These impacts have been felt more slowly in some SSA countries than inothers; however, during the coming months and years, contracting financial and commercialmarkets will have an increasingly negative impact on national economies and regional trade inSSA.Safety nets in the fields of education, health, nutrition and social protection need to be put intoplace rapidly to avoid the having the poor, and especially poor children, suffer disproportionately.Recently, World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick
stated,
“A world that doesn’t learn fromhistory is condemned to repeat it. We need to learn from the history of past crises, whengovernments squeezed for cash, cut into social programs with often devastating impacts on the poor. People in developing countries have much less cushion [than people in developed countries]: no savings, no insurance, no unemployment benefits, and often no food. During theEast Asia crisis, there was a 22 percent increase in anemia among pregnant women in Thailand,while school enrolments fell in Indonesia. This kind of reversal can affect a generation. We must not let it happen again” (World Bank 2009).
As a consequence of this approach, the World Bank is boldly increasing its financing facility for food that includes school feeding services, food supplements, and micronutrients for mothers andtheir children. World Bank Group Managing Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala observed, “
Thecontinuing risky economic environment, combined with continuing volatility for food prices, meansfor poor people the food crisis is far from over. Many poor countries have not benefitted fromsome moderation of food price spikes in global markets. The decision to expand the facility will help ensure fast track measures are in place for continued rapid response to help countries.”
Similarly, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank investments in social protection arerising rapidly. Specifically, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes have been found to beeffective in both stimulating spending and protecting the poor at a relatively low cost, often lessthan 1% of a country’s gross domestic product (GDP).Successful CCT programmes, such as Mexico’s
Oportunidades,
or Brazil’s
Bolsa Familia,
cost onthe order of 0.4 percent of GDP, while Ethiopia’s largest safety net program, the
ProductiveSafety Net
, costs about 1.7 percent of GDP (World Bank 2009). CCT programmes have beenshown to achieve striking improvements in access to and use of services for ECD, education,nutrition and health (Fiszbein and Schady 2009).
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