A new report by the World Health Organisation released on Friday shows that Africa has registered an increase in life expectancy by almost 10 years over the past 15 years. The report attributes the dramatic gains in life expectancy between 2000 and 2015 to globally driven improvements in child survival, progress in malaria control and expanded access to antiretroviral for people living with HIV. However, despite the significant strides, it is not yet time to celebrate because the life expectancy gap between developing and developed countries is still big. This calls for more efforts for the developing countries to leverage on the current progress to increase the life expectancy to the level of the developed countries. For example, the average life expectancy of Japan is 86.8 years compared to Sierra Leone with the world’s lowest life expectancy for both sexes: 50.8 years for women and 49.3 years for men. The current development pace on the African continent is evidence that Africa has potential to significantly improve life expectancy, especially through poverty alleviation, which should be top on the agenda for Africa. One of the reasons why Rwanda’s life expectancy significantly improved over the last 10 years from 51 to 64.5 years is the country’s success in poverty fight. The fourth Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey (EICV4) released last year, showed significant decrease in poverty levels. The report, compiled by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) and its partners, showed that some 660,000 Rwandans were lifted out of poverty over between 2012 and 2015 with poverty levels reducing by 5.8 per cent. With the current growth rate, Rwanda’s vision to eradicate extreme poverty by the year 2020 will be realized and subsequently this will improve further the country’s average life expectancy.
