FYI: The developing world's toilet crisis

The Gates Foundation recently announced a contest to create an innovative toilet. No, the purpose isn't to produce a new, shiny apparatus for your bathroom. Rather, the Gates Foundation wants to address the world's toilet crisis: 40% of the world's population still have no access to toilets.

Here is a roundup of why having access to a toilet is so important:


Health:

• 2.6 billion people have no access to a toilet. Of this group, 75% live in rural areas.
• Poor sanitation can lead to diarrhea. 2.2 million people die from diarrhoeal diseases every year, according to WHO.
• Diarrhoeal diseases are the second most common cause of death in children under five. 88% of these deaths were caused by lack of sanitation, poor hygiene practices and contaminated drinking water.
• Intestinal worms are also a problem for those who lack proper sanitation facilities. Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at a time. 
• Getting sick from poor hygiene and sanitation means a loss of income for families, missed school, and extra expenditure on medications.

Social development:

• Schools in the developing world are often built without toilets and washrooms. This is one reason why teenage girls often drop out of school as there are no private places to change menstruation cloths/napkins.
• Many women walk to remote areas to defecate and often face the risk of violence at nighttime.

Environment:

• 90% of human excrement end up untreated in rivers in the developing world. 
• Sewage dumped at sea or carried upstream by rivers increases the level of nitrogen in bodies of water, leading to the loss of aquatic life.

Watch Current TV's Adam Yamaguchi travel around Asia, detailing the problems and solutions associated with the world's toilet crisis:

Is the developing world focusing enough on education?

Rebecca Winthrop, Director at the Center for Universal Education at Brookings Institution, thinks not. In the video interview below, Winthrop notes that there is a learning crisis in the developing world. There are still large segments of young populations that are not receiving an education such as children in areas of conflict and girls. Many that are in schools are not learning fundamental skills such as reading. Equally as important, secondary grade students are not learning skills that are needed to acquire jobs in the private sector.

According to Winthrop, investing just four percent of national GDP in education can lift children out of poverty and improve overall economic success for the country in which they live.

Watch the full interview:

Can Africa grow enough of its own food?

The famine in the Horn of Africa is highlighting an important question in food politics: Does the continent have the capacity to grow its own food for all its inhabitants?

According to Harvard University professor Robert Paalberg, it can but the farmers in Africa need help.

"Part of the problem in rural Africa is that most African farmers are physically cut off from markets. Seventy percent of all people in the countryside in Africa live more than two kilometers - that's a 30-minute walk - from the nearest paved road. So, their marketing costs are so high they don't have any incentive really to invest in more productive methods," Paarlberg says.

He also notes that US assistance to African small farmers has declined 85 percent. 

Listen to his full interview with NPR to find out what the US can do to help African farmers.

Visualize: Somalia's children in numbers

"This famine will be remembered as a famine that has destroyed generations of children." - Supermodel Iman who is from Somalia

US officials estimate that 29,000 children under the age of five have died in the last 90 days from the drought in the Horn of Africa. These numbers will rise as over 640,000 children are actuely malnourished and are in desperate need of aid.

Want to understand these numbers better? Here is another perspective:

CBC News

Who is giving to the Horn of Africa crisis?



Source: Mohamed Sheikh Nor/AP

 The famine crisis in the Horn of Africa still continues and experts in the field still say there needs to be more money. The UN estimates that 12.4 million people need humanitarian assistance and $2.5 billion aid is needed to reach these people. That's $1.4 billion more than what has been committed to so far.

So who is giving? The Guardian has been keeping tabs on which countries are giving and how much. (See IBM's interactive chart below for data from OCHA or download the full spreadsheet here.)



Topping the list is the United States with a committment of almost 400 million dollars to the region. But more of this committment is going to Ethiopia and Kenya, rather than Somalia. Following behind, the UK has given over 111 million to the region and the EU has given over 91 million.

Who will step up to help fill that $1.4 billion gap of aid?