One Health: Lessons Learned from East Africa

Africa is faced with many of the most daunting challenges (food insecurity, poverty, and disease) of our time. With an area of 30 million square kilometers, it is the second-largest continent, covering 6% of the Earth’s surface and 20% of its land mass. It currently comprises 54 sovereign countries accounting for roughly 15% of the world’s human population. In 2009, 22 of 24 nations identified as having “Low Human Development” on the United Nations’ Human Development Index were located in sub-Saharan Africa (http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/). Today, 33 of the 48 nations on the United Nations’ list of least developed countries are in Africa. On the other hand, Africa also has arguably the largest proportion of intact natural ecosystems, biodiversity, and sociocultural capital and the lowest impact on global warming of any continent, with considerable “carbon credit.” Africa’s ratio of biocapacity (capacity of an area to provide resources and absorb wastes) to consumption (ecological footprint) (>150%) is much higher than that for the developed world, which is dramatically negative in these indicators. When an area’s ecological footprint exceeds its biocapacity, unsustainability occurs (www.footprintnetwork.org).