This blog focuses on East Africa. East Africa consists of the following countries: Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mozambique, Rwanda, Réunion, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In figure 1 all these countries are coloured orange.
Source: United Nations Statistics Division- Standard Country and Area Codes Classifications (M49)”. un.org.
The total population in East Africa consist of approximately 433.905.000 people in 2019. In the past decades the population increased and as you can see in figure 2 this increase rise will continue in the future. The expectation is that in 2100 the total population number will increase to more than 1.4 billion people (2).
The population of East Africa is relative young. 52,9% of the population is 19 years old or younger. 44,2% of the population is between 20 and 64 years old and just 2,9% is 65 years or older (2). The age distribution of the population in 2019 is also shown in figure 3.
Source: United Nations, DESA, Population Division. World Population Prospect 2019. Retrieved from: https://population.un.org/wpp
Source: United Nations, DESA, Population Division. World Population Prospect 2019. Retrieved from: https://population.un.org/wpp
In terms of political situation, there happened a lot and there is still a lot going on in East Africa. Kenya and Tanzania are both relatively stable countries. Uganda faced instability in the past because of coups and military dictatorships. Eritrea became independent from Ethiopia in 1993. Since then the countries were at war. In 2018 the leaders of the two countries signed a declaration to end the border conflicts. A country that gained independence more recently, namely in 2011, is South Sudan. Before 2011 South Sudan was part of Sudan. The independence didn’t solve all the conflicts, instead a civil war started. Until now the situation in South Sudan is still far from stable. There are even more situations of conflicts and political instability than only the examples in these counties. These examples provided give an insight and idea in the problems the countries face.
Different aspects of the demography can influence health. For example the distribution of the population influence the burden of disease, as some diseases are more prevalent on a certain age. Also conflicts and political instability influences the performance of the health system negatively.
Sources used:
– https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49?
– https://population.un.org/wpp/DataQuery/
– https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756223/obo-9780199756223-0038.xml
– https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10246029.2000.9628068
– https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/after-making-peace-ethiopia-and-eritrea-now-focus-development
– https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14069082
East Africa 
Anouk Haremaker posted this comment on 14 november 2019 22:38. Because we moved the blog post to another place, the comment disappeared. That’s why we (the authors of this blog) place it again:
“First of all, I want to say that the blog is very clear and that you guys made good use of headlines. My question relates to the area and audience that you guys have picked for your blog. As you guys mentioned in the general information, Eastern Africa consist of many different countries. I can imagine that the prevalence of the diseases differs per country and that it is difficult to compare this to each other. Besides that, your goal is to inform the public regarding the double burden of disease in Eastern Africa, but doesn’t the public you want to reach also differ per country? Is it therefore not more convenient to be more specific and perhaps just chose one country instead of whole Eastern Africa?”
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Dear Anouk,
Thanks for your comment. Of course, as you are also mentioning, the countries in Eastern Africa have differences from each other. We chose to focus us on the whole region and on different diseases (instead just one or two), to show these differences. Our audience is the general public, with our blog we want to show the general public the real health issues in Eastern Africa. We want to do this, because a lot of people (especially in the Western world) still see Africa as a country instead as a continent, and still think that the problems that Africa face are just undernutrition, infectious diseases etc. I hope this answer clarifies the purpose of our blog.
Kind regards,
Jinke, Joanne, Marieke, Thom and Imke
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