Toilets Report and the Future of Africa

This Op-Ed piece in my local paper today, by the inestimable Charles Onyango Obbo.

‘Toilets report’ reveals why Muslims will rule Africa

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....I remembered that some years ago, a report on sanitation in Uganda had shown that the Muslim population had the best sanitation rates in the country. Bingo, that was the connection. Of the 10 countries with the best sanitation rates in Africa, seven of them were predominantly or wholly Muslim.

Water --- and sanitation---is tied to the ablution that is a pre-condition to Muslim prayer rituals and notions of purity. That is just one of the reasons why, on the whole, in religiously diverse poor countries the Muslims usually have a far higher standard of sanitation than Christians. This, in turn, has a bearing on standard of health, life expectancy, and economic productivity.

There are those who have argued that, partly for the reasons above, Muslim countries in Africa were spared the scourge of Aids that nearly decimated, and still torments, countries with majority Christian populations. The social disruption and economic wreckage that Aids visited on “Christian” African countries weren’t as extensive in the Muslim ones.....

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