Africa Articles

AIDS has now been with us for a quarter of a century, and there are people still alive who were among the first people to be diagnosed with HIV after the retrovirus was discovered and named in 1983. Think back to the world of that time: Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, and still locked in what seemed to be a permanent state of hostility with the USSR, whose collapse at the end of the decade was almost entirely unexpected. The greatest economic challenge to the United States was thought then to be Japan, and very few people anticipated the rapid rise of China.

MAGALI RHEAULT is a Senior Consultant in Gallup’s Social and Economic Analysis practice. BOB TORTORA is Gallup’s Regional Research Director for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Following President Mwai Kibaki’s reelection in late December 2007, amid allegations of widespread electoral fraud by both sides, Kenya erupted in a wave of political and civil violence. Protests by supporters of opposition candidate Raila Odinga combined with targeted ethnic violence to cause over 1,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of displacements. Like many African states, Kenya has experienced periodic violence since gaining independence in 1963. Yet this episode was the most frightening—and one of the largest—in Kenyan history. Many feared it was the start of a frightening new chapter, a reminder of the many issues that remained unresolved in independent Kenya.