A Child’s Fifth Birthday Should Not Depend on a Foreign Budget

A fifth birthday should be unremarkable. For too many African families, it is not. An estimated 4.9 million children died before reaching the age of five in 2024, and nearly six in ten of those deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Most were preventable with interventions we already know how to deliver. In Nigeria, the latest estimate is 116 deaths per 1,000 live births, roughly one child in nine. Judith Leveillee, UNICEF’s field chief in Nigeria, recently told The Independent that child survival will be one of two priorities in the agency’s next country programme. “These are the most basic of […] The post A Child’s Fifth Birthday Should Not Depend on a Foreign Budget appeared first on African Arguments.