The 22 countries in the East and Southern Africa region are an economically and socially heterogeneous mix. The International Monetary Fund has projected that Ethiopia, Mozambique, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia will be among the 10 fastest growing economies in the world between now and 2015. On the other hand, the region includes some of sub-Saharan Africa’s poorest and most fragile states, including Eritrea and South Sudan.

East and Southern Africa also has the nations with the highest population density on the continent (Burundi and Rwanda) and the lowest (Botswana and Namibia).

Regional progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals has been irregular across the various countries and MDG targets. Progress towards MDG1 on reducing poverty and hunger, for example, is not on track. And while the proportion of poor people is decreasing in East and Southern Africa as a whole, the total number is increasing in Southern Africa.

The population of the region is about 399 million, of whom 70 per cent live in rural areas. In countries for which data are available, about 43 per cent live on less than US$1.25 a day.

Rural poverty in the region
Despite their great diversity, the nations of East and Southern Africa have some things in common – including persistent obstacles to the productivity and food security of their smallholder famers.

Across the region, farmers struggle to meet the demands of a growing middle class for high-quality, diverse agricultural products. That demand represents an enormous opportunity for small-scale growers and producers. Too often, however, their productivity is limited by severely degraded land, chronic droughts and limited access to the credit they need to farm more intensively.

In some countries, meanwhile, armed conflict continues to hinder development. In much of the region, rural roads and infrastructure are inadequate to bring in needed agricultural inputs and effectively transport products from field to market in a cost-competitive manner.

Eradicating rural poverty in the region
Improving, the equitable and environmentally sustainable management of natural resources is increasingly important in East and Southern Africa, as the effects of climate change and resource degradation hit home.

Therefore, many IFAD projects in the region support poor rural people’s secure and sustainable access to land and water, which is essential if they are to escape poverty. In partnership with governments, communities, farmers’ organizations, the private sector, and rural women and youth, these projects are introducing simple techniques for water and land management – techniques that prevent damage to soils from flooding and help conserve water. One major objective is restoring ecosystems to bolster the resilience of agricultural livelihoods.

Other projects in the region focus on strengthening:

• Improved agricultural technologies and effective production services
• Rural financial services
• Transparent and competitive markets for agricultural inputs and produce
• Off-farm employment and enterprise development
• Smallholders’ participation in local and national policy and budgetary processes.

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Countries in East and Southern Africa

• Angola
• Botswana
• Burundi
• Comoros
• Eritrea
• Ethiopia
• Kenya
• Lesotho
• Madagascar
• Malawi
• Mauritius
• Mozambique
• Namibia
• Rwanda
• Seychelles
• South Africa
• South Sudan
• Swaziland
• Tanzania, United Republic of
• Uganda
• Zambia
• Zimbabwe