It was still dark, not yet 4am. But outside Letenk'iel was moving
already, rekindling the fire from the overnight embers. Inside the
mud-walled hut, her husband Gebremariam coughed. Then as the first
birds were heard, he swung his legs over the side of a bed made from
rough rope strung across a wooden frame. He stood in the doorway and
stretched. His wife was already at her morning chores.
As the cold dawn light suffused the sky she sprinkled water from a
squat earthenware jar across the mud floor and began to sweep the
dampened earth with a brush of long grasses bound tightly together. The
day had begun.
Women work two-thirds of Africa's working hours, and produce 70 per
cent of its food, yet earn only 10 per cent of its income, and own less
than 1 per cent of its property. They work three hours a day longer
than the average British woman does on professional and domestic work
combined.
Letenk'iel, from the village of Meshal in southern Eritrea, poked
about in the straw where the hens had spent the night in the hope that
there might be eggs to take to market to exchange for salt and oil. But
there were none.
The baby began to cry. Letenk'iel fastened the child to her back
with a long, dirty cloth to keep him comforted until she had the time
to breastfeed. The child coughed. She fed the tiny fire, in what looked
like an old biscuit-tin, with slow-burning wood on which to roast the
few kernels of wheat which would be breakfast for her family of six.
They would get a handful each. She would "not bother" to eat.
African women's health is particularly poor. Only 37 per cent
survive to the age of 65, compared with almost 90 per cent in the UK. A
poor woman in Malawi is 200 times more likely to die as a result of
pregnancy and childbirth than a woman in the UK. Some 250,000 women die
each year from complications compared to just 1,500 in Europe.
The first big task of the day was to fetch water. First, she set her
children about their chores. Gebremariam and the eldest boy, Daniel,
were to shift stones from their field in readiness for ploughing.
Kudos, the second son, would take the ox on the long trek for water.
Her daughters, Mabraheet and Azmera, would spend hour hours fetching
firewood from the far mountainside. After two hours of farm work,
Daniel would set off on the hour's walk to school. He was the only one
they could afford to send.
In Africa, one in three children does not go to school. Two thirds
of the 40 million non-attenders are girls and the illiteracy among
women in places such as Mozambique is double that of men.
Yet, as Asia has shown, when girls are educated, they marry later,
have fewer children and their incomes rise. Economic productivity
grows, infant mortality is halved, deaths in childbirth fall, birth
rates slow, child malnutrition is halved, general nutrition and health
improve and the spread of HIV is reduced. Every extra year of education
boosts a girl's eventual wages by at least 10 per cent.
For Letenk'iel, it was a 25-minute walk down the hill to the pump
but it would take 40 minutes to walk back up with five gallons of water
wedged into the small of her back and tied on with a rope of old rag.
Once there were three wells. The eight-metre one has dried up. The
nine-metre well has a little brackish water at the bottom which even
the donkeys refused to drink. The flow from the pump of the 25-metre
well had slowed to a painful trickle. There was just barely enough for
everyone to drink.
More than 75 per cent of the population of Ethiopia lack access to
safe drinking-water. More than 300 million people across Africa drink
dirty water daily. Access to clean water would save women and girls
walking an average six kilometres a day to fetch water, freeing more
time for the family, for school and for productive work. Yet the rich
world's aid to the water sector has fallen by 25 per cent since 1996.
Letenk'iel hoisted the water container and swivelled it round to
lodge in the small of her back. A friend fastened it in place. When she
reached home, Gebremariam was back and, without pause, she began the
preparation for lunch. As the others ate, Letenk'iel breastfed the
baby. Often this took a long time. Letenk'iel's milk did not flow
freely, largely because there was not much food to go around. She
coughed - loose and rattling - as she prepared little tasks which could
be done as the four-month-old suckled. It was an hour before the child
had taken his fill. When his eyes closed, she passed him to Mabraheet
who lay him among the blankets.
One in six children in Africa dies before their fifth birthday.
Average spending on health per person in Africa in 2001 was between $13
and $21; in the developed world it is more than $2,000 per person per
year. African health systems are at the point of collapse after years
of massive under-investment.
On a normal afternoon, Letenk'iel would have left the house to join
her husband in the field, shifting stones. After the ploughing was
done, and the seed sown, it would be her daily job to keep the weeds
from the rows of sorghum, because they could not afford that any of the
soil's goodness should be wasted nurturing weeds. If the rains came.
Women are the backbone of Africa's rural economy. They grow at least
70 per cent of its food and are responsible for half the animal
husbandry. Most of what they earn is spent on the household and
children; men, by contrast, spend a significantly higher amount on
themselves.
Yet on widowhood many African women lose their meagre assets. A
Namibian study showed 44 per cent of widows lost cattle, 28 per cent
lost livestock and 41 per cent lost farm equipment in disputes with
their in-laws after the death of their husbands. In many African
countries, they lose all rights to cultivate their husband's land.
But today was the day for the mother-and-child clinic at the nearest
health post. It was a two-hour walk each way. The baby had the rattling
cough that he had caught from her. They were offering contraceptives
and advice on HIV today too.
Of the 25 million people living with HIV and Aids in Africa, nearly
57 per cent are women. That figure rises to 80 per cent among those
aged 15 to 19. Women have a greater biological vulnerability to the
virus but the main problem is powerlessness. They are forced into
sexual activity earlier, are unable to insist on condoms, have fewer
rights and resources to call upon, and are sometimes forced to barter
sexual favours to survive. "This is my choice: either I get Aids
eventually or my baby starves now," as one Kenyan prostitute put it.
An HIV-positive woman is nearly 10 times as likely to experience
violence at the hands of her partner as a woman who does not have the
disease. Domestic violence causes more deaths and disability among
women aged 15 to 44 worldwide than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents
and war. In at least 20 African countries, more than half the women
have also suffered female genital mutilation.
For Letenk'iel, back from the clinic, there was more water to be
fetched. Then a meagre evening meal of flat bread, cooked on a large
tray over the biscuit-tin stove. After dinner, as Letenk'iel was
sitting in the stable, picking the lice from the baby's jumper, and
helping Daniel with his homework, she saw a new rip in Azmera's thin
and grimy little dress. "How did that happen?"
"It wasn't me," said the pert little six-year-old. "It got old."
Her mother wrapped the child in a blanket and, with the light
fading, she sewed the threadbare material, using a strand pulled from
the sack of a food-aid bag.
Darkness fell. She ushered the children to their beds, and began the
last tidying chores before damping down the fire. She would be up in
six hours.
Voices from a continent in turmoil
Hellen Wanjiku, 24, Kenya
Hellen was born in Korogocho, a large slum on the northern outskirts
of Nairobi. She is known as Shiko Babes, and is managing editor of the
local community radio station.
She says: "The youth have empowered themselves. We believe we can
survive. It is changing our belief and giving us an option. If a youth
can get a job then they won't steal."
Amal Achmed Altaib, 19, Sudan
Amal will never forget the Janjaweed Arab militia attack on her
village in Darfur in January last year. She now lives in a refugee camp.
She says: "They came on camels at 10 at night, shooting. Our houses were burnt and animals taken."
Ncumisa Kaba, 26, South Africa
Ncumisa Kaba is one of the young African professional women who see
themselves as the "real embodiment" of a better future. She is HIV
negative and has regular tests.
She says: "We are not a continent of poverty and flies as we are widely perceived. We are potentially a land of milk and honey."
Fatouma Al-Kassoum, Mali
Fatouma has five children: three boys and two girls. Her husband
left her. She was trained by an Oxfam partner, GARI, to tell of the
benefits of girls going to school.
She says: "Traditionally most girls marry young. I talk with parents
and let them know that it's not good to prevent girls going to school."
Beatrice Okot, 38, Uganda
Displaced by war in Uganda, Beatrice lives in two rooms with her two
children. She has HIV and so did her husband. He died in 1994.
She says: "If there was no war, life would be better. We had land
and a free house, no shortage of food. I always tell my children to be
aware of HIV. They know I'm positive."
Serah Wanjiku, 19, Kenya
For five shillings (4p), Serah sells small bottles of glue to the
street children and unemployed of Korogosho. Serah's parents died of
Aids when she was 14.
She says: "I never wanted my life to become this. I have done a
hairdressing course. I am not happy to sell glue, but I have to
survive."
Women: A world apart
Life expectancy
Africa: 46
UK: 80
Chance of a girl going to primary school
Africa: 60 %
UK: 100 %
Minutes worked per day
Africa: 590*
UK: 413
Female literacy
Africa: 53.2%
UK: 99.9%
Births attended by a midwife
Africa: 43 %
UK: 99 %
Deaths in childbirth a year (per 100,000)
Africa: 920
UK: 13
Women using contraception
Africa: 15 % **
UK: 84 %
Average number of children
Africa: 5.5
UK: 1.7
Deaths during abortion every year
Africa: 29,800
UK: 8
Female MPs
Africa: 6.5% (Chad) 49% (Rwanda)
UK: 18.5 %
Professional and technical staff who are women
Africa: 46%
UK: 32%
Women with HIV
Africa: 13,200,000
UK: 21,000
All figures are average African woman versus average British
woman except: * Kenya, ** Ivory Coast. Sources: United Nations
Development Programme; World Bank; DfID; Commission for Africa; Save
the Children; Oxfam
It was still dark, not yet 4am. But outside Letenk'iel was moving
already, rekindling the fire from the overnight embers. Inside the
mud-walled hut, her husband Gebremariam coughed. Then as the first
birds were heard, he swung his legs over the side of a bed made from
rough rope strung across a wooden frame. He stood in the doorway and
stretched. His wife was already at her morning chores.
As the cold dawn light suffused the sky she sprinkled water from a
squat earthenware jar across the mud floor and began to sweep the
dampened earth with a brush of long grasses bound tightly together. The
day had begun.
Women work two-thirds of Africa's working hours, and produce 70 per
cent of its food, yet earn only 10 per cent of its income, and own less
than 1 per cent of its property. They work three hours a day longer
than the average British woman does on professional and domestic work
combined.
Letenk'iel, from the village of Meshal in southern Eritrea, poked
about in the straw where the hens had spent the night in the hope that
there might be eggs to take to market to exchange for salt and oil. But
there were none.
The baby began to cry. Letenk'iel fastened the child to her back
with a long, dirty cloth to keep him comforted until she had the time
to breastfeed. The child coughed. She fed the tiny fire, in what looked
like an old biscuit-tin, with slow-burning wood on which to roast the
few kernels of wheat which would be breakfast for her family of six.
They would get a handful each. She would "not bother" to eat.
African women's health is particularly poor. Only 37 per cent
survive to the age of 65, compared with almost 90 per cent in the UK. A
poor woman in Malawi is 200 times more likely to die as a result of
pregnancy and childbirth than a woman in the UK. Some 250,000 women die
each year from complications compared to just 1,500 in Europe.
The first big task of the day was to fetch water. First, she set her
children about their chores. Gebremariam and the eldest boy, Daniel,
were to shift stones from their field in readiness for ploughing.
Kudos, the second son, would take the ox on the long trek for water.
Her daughters, Mabraheet and Azmera, would spend hour hours fetching
firewood from the far mountainside. After two hours of farm work,
Daniel would set off on the hour's walk to school. He was the only one
they could afford to send.
In Africa, one in three children does not go to school. Two thirds
of the 40 million non-attenders are girls and the illiteracy among
women in places such as Mozambique is double that of men.
Yet, as Asia has shown, when girls are educated, they marry later,
have fewer children and their incomes rise. Economic productivity
grows, infant mortality is halved, deaths in childbirth fall, birth
rates slow, child malnutrition is halved, general nutrition and health
improve and the spread of HIV is reduced. Every extra year of education
boosts a girl's eventual wages by at least 10 per cent.
For Letenk'iel, it was a 25-minute walk down the hill to the pump
but it would take 40 minutes to walk back up with five gallons of water
wedged into the small of her back and tied on with a rope of old rag.
Once there were three wells. The eight-metre one has dried up. The
nine-metre well has a little brackish water at the bottom which even
the donkeys refused to drink. The flow from the pump of the 25-metre
well had slowed to a painful trickle. There was just barely enough for
everyone to drink.
More than 75 per cent of the population of Ethiopia lack access to
safe drinking-water. More than 300 million people across Africa drink
dirty water daily. Access to clean water would save women and girls
walking an average six kilometres a day to fetch water, freeing more
time for the family, for school and for productive work. Yet the rich
world's aid to the water sector has fallen by 25 per cent since 1996.
Letenk'iel hoisted the water container and swivelled it round to
lodge in the small of her back. A friend fastened it in place. When she
reached home, Gebremariam was back and, without pause, she began the
preparation for lunch. As the others ate, Letenk'iel breastfed the
baby. Often this took a long time. Letenk'iel's milk did not flow
freely, largely because there was not much food to go around. She
coughed - loose and rattling - as she prepared little tasks which could
be done as the four-month-old suckled. It was an hour before the child
had taken his fill. When his eyes closed, she passed him to Mabraheet
who lay him among the blankets.
One in six children in Africa dies before their fifth birthday.
Average spending on health per person in Africa in 2001 was between $13
and $21; in the developed world it is more than $2,000 per person per
year. African health systems are at the point of collapse after years
of massive under-investment.
On a normal afternoon, Letenk'iel would have left the house to join
her husband in the field, shifting stones. After the ploughing was
done, and the seed sown, it would be her daily job to keep the weeds
from the rows of sorghum, because they could not afford that any of the
soil's goodness should be wasted nurturing weeds. If the rains came.
Women are the backbone of Africa's rural economy. They grow at least
70 per cent of its food and are responsible for half the animal
husbandry. Most of what they earn is spent on the household and
children; men, by contrast, spend a significantly higher amount on
themselves.
Yet on widowhood many African women lose their meagre assets. A
Namibian study showed 44 per cent of widows lost cattle, 28 per cent
lost livestock and 41 per cent lost farm equipment in disputes with
their in-laws after the death of their husbands. In many African
countries, they lose all rights to cultivate their husband's land.
But today was the day for the mother-and-child clinic at the nearest
health post. It was a two-hour walk each way. The baby had the rattling
cough that he had caught from her. They were offering contraceptives
and advice on HIV today too.
Of the 25 million people living with HIV and Aids in Africa, nearly
57 per cent are women. That figure rises to 80 per cent among those
aged 15 to 19. Women have a greater biological vulnerability to the
virus but the main problem is powerlessness. They are forced into
sexual activity earlier, are unable to insist on condoms, have fewer
rights and resources to call upon, and are sometimes forced to barter
sexual favours to survive. "This is my choice: either I get Aids
eventually or my baby starves now," as one Kenyan prostitute put it.
An HIV-positive woman is nearly 10 times as likely to experience
violence at the hands of her partner as a woman who does not have the
disease. Domestic violence causes more deaths and disability among
women aged 15 to 44 worldwide than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents
and war. In at least 20 African countries, more than half the women
have also suffered female genital mutilation.
For Letenk'iel, back from the clinic, there was more water to be
fetched. Then a meagre evening meal of flat bread, cooked on a large
tray over the biscuit-tin stove. After dinner, as Letenk'iel was
sitting in the stable, picking the lice from the baby's jumper, and
helping Daniel with his homework, she saw a new rip in Azmera's thin
and grimy little dress. "How did that happen?"
"It wasn't me," said the pert little six-year-old. "It got old."
Her mother wrapped the child in a blanket and, with the light
fading, she sewed the threadbare material, using a strand pulled from
the sack of a food-aid bag.
Darkness fell. She ushered the children to their beds, and began the
last tidying chores before damping down the fire. She would be up in
six hours.
Voices from a continent in turmoil
Hellen Wanjiku, 24, Kenya
Hellen was born in Korogocho, a large slum on the northern outskirts
of Nairobi. She is known as Shiko Babes, and is managing editor of the
local community radio station.
She says: "The youth have empowered themselves. We believe we can
survive. It is changing our belief and giving us an option. If a youth
can get a job then they won't steal."
Amal Achmed Altaib, 19, Sudan
Amal will never forget the Janjaweed Arab militia attack on her
village in Darfur in January last year. She now lives in a refugee camp.
She says: "They came on camels at 10 at night, shooting. Our houses were burnt and animals taken."
Ncumisa Kaba, 26, South Africa
Ncumisa Kaba is one of the young African professional women who see
themselves as the "real embodiment" of a better future. She is HIV
negative and has regular tests.
She says: "We are not a continent of poverty and flies as we are widely perceived. We are potentially a land of milk and honey."
Fatouma Al-Kassoum, Mali
Fatouma has five children: three boys and two girls. Her husband
left her. She was trained by an Oxfam partner, GARI, to tell of the
benefits of girls going to school.
She says: "Traditionally most girls marry young. I talk with parents
and let them know that it's not good to prevent girls going to school."
Beatrice Okot, 38, Uganda
Displaced by war in Uganda, Beatrice lives in two rooms with her two
children. She has HIV and so did her husband. He died in 1994.
She says: "If there was no war, life would be better. We had land
and a free house, no shortage of food. I always tell my children to be
aware of HIV. They know I'm positive."
Serah Wanjiku, 19, Kenya
For five shillings (4p), Serah sells small bottles of glue to the
street children and unemployed of Korogosho. Serah's parents died of
Aids when she was 14.
She says: "I never wanted my life to become this. I have done a
hairdressing course. I am not happy to sell glue, but I have to
survive."
Women: A world apart
Life expectancy
Africa: 46
UK: 80
Chance of a girl going to primary school
Africa: 60 %
UK: 100 %
Minutes worked per day
Africa: 590*
UK: 413
Female literacy
Africa: 53.2%
UK: 99.9%
Births attended by a midwife
Africa: 43 %
UK: 99 %
Deaths in childbirth a year (per 100,000)
Africa: 920
UK: 13
Women using contraception
Africa: 15 % **
UK: 84 %
Average number of children
Africa: 5.5
UK: 1.7
Deaths during abortion every year
Africa: 29,800
UK: 8
Female MPs
Africa: 6.5% (Chad) 49% (Rwanda)
UK: 18.5 %
Professional and technical staff who are women
Africa: 46%
UK: 32%
Women with HIV
Africa: 13,200,000
UK: 21,000
All figures are average African woman versus average British
woman except: * Kenya, ** Ivory Coast. Sources: United Nations
Development Programme; World Bank; DfID; Commission for Africa; Save
the Children; Oxfam
