The Plight of People With Disabilities in Africa

Africa,is faced with pertinent issues on disabilities which have not been fully addressed at school and national levels. The four traditional areas of disabilities in Africa, namely physical disabilities, hearing impairment, visual impairment and mental disabilities (mental retardation), have been the main focus for several decades. Yet, today a majority of these PwDs do not have adequate training and services to enable them live independently.

Africa exemplifies the correlation between socio-economic development and the prevalence of disabling conditions. For instance, estimates for the number of people with disabilities in the continent range from twenty to forty percent of the population, including ten to fifteen percent of school-age children. Given that truism, and taking the forty percent estimate, it is reasonable to state that there are more than four hundred million people with disabilities in Africa although other estimates limit the number to eighty million . Whether this number is put at eighty or more than four hundred million, it is indubitable that these are mind-boggling figures. Worse still, there is a consensus that the number continues to grow daily.

The United Nations has taken various measures to address the plight of people with disabilities (PWDs). Beyond reiterating the rights of all peoples as espoused in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among other steps, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the World Program of Action Concerning Disabled Persons at its 37th regular session in 1982. The program was intended not only to prevent disabilities but also to promote the equality, social inclusion and “full participation” of persons with disabilities in all aspects of personal, social, cultural, and socio-economic development. “The Program further emphasized that these concepts should apply with the same scope and urgency to all countries, regardless of their level of development. Following this program, the General Assembly declared the United Nations Decade of Disabled Persons (1983-1992).

Doubtless, various African countries are striving strenuously to provide for, and include people with disabilities. A number of countries, including South Africa, have strict disability laws as well as university departments, even entire colleges focusing on disability studies. In general, however, it behooves Africa to follow and even exceed the recommendations advanced by the WHO and World Bank. This is because the equality, inclusion, and full societal participation of people with disabilities are matters of human rights, not issues of social welfare or humanitarianism. Failure to do so is to ignore and violate local, regional, and international laws and conventions already recognized by African countries. Besides, there is ample evidence showing the personal, community, and national socio-economic benefits of educating, training, and employing people with disabilities. It is therefore important—indeed actively impelling—that these people be educated, trained and reintegrated into society as employed taxpayers.  Otherwise, not only will their human rights be denied but in addition, they will be forced to depend on the employed few thereby exacerbating poverty and its corollaries.

In advocating for the inclusion of PWDs at all levels in Africa, it is realized that the continent has some of the poorest nations in the world. However, this truism need not be an excuse for neglecting people with disabilities. Where there is political will, adjustments, adaptations, modifications, and improvisations can be made to meet the human, social, cultural, educational, and employment needs of people with disabilities in Africa. Stated differently, providing for people with disabilities in Africa, as anywhere else, is a governance issue.

In conclusion, in general, it is easy for government officials and others in society to ignore or sweep under the rug, issues regarding people with disabilities. This is unfortunate because such people know not their future. As has been said often, “An able-bodied person is one who is not disabled YET.” Likewise, decades ago, Dajani, a Jordanian writer laid out the criteria for a nation’s civilization or level of development. He wrote:

The criterion for civilization in any nation is its (the nation's) standard of social services. We know of communities where the old and the weaklings are either put to death or left to die in isolation because the community cannot afford to keep them. Social consciousness in a community is reached when individuals or groups feel a responsibility toward the old, the weak and the handicapped. Social consciousness goes beyond a feeling of responsibility. It drives those individuals and groups to institute ways and means of relieving the handicapped and helping them to live happily and contentedly in an environment in which an individual could utilize, to the utmost, his natural abilities in the belief, that self-help is the best help.