The Commission for Africa’s report, Our Common Interest contains a wealth of fascinating and often shocking facts and figures on Africa. Some of these may be useful when exploring Africa in the classroom.

A guide to what the Our Common Interest report says has been produced in conjunction with the Learning Africa site. This offers an easy-to-read version of the Commission for Africa's report and also contains a wealth of facinating facts and figures on Africa. Click here to download this version in PDF format. Please note this is a large file and may take several minutes to download (3.3MB).

For a classroom activity: Africa True False Quiz, which uses facts and figures on Africa click here

On poverty and health…

• Malaria is the biggest single killer of African children; half the deaths could be avoided if parents had access to diagnosis and drugs that cost little more than US$1 a dose.

• Two million people will die of AIDS in Africa this year; in Zambia, by 2010 every third child will be an orphan and teachers are dying faster than they can be trained.

• Hunger is a key factor in more deaths than all the continent’s infectious diseases put together.

• More than 300,000 died in the Asian tsunami disaster; the same number of people die in Africa every month due to poverty and disease.

• Life expectancy is falling. People in Africa on average live to the age of just 46 but in some countries it is as low as 35.

On income and expenditure…

• Half the population of Africa live on less than one dollar a day.

• Rich nations spend as much on subsidising the production of unwanted food as the entire income of all the people in Africa – almost US$1 billion a day.

• Africa’s transport costs are around twice as high as those for a typical Asian country; shipping a car from Japan to Abidjan costs US$1,500, whereas moving it from Abidjan to Addis Ababa costs US$5,000.

• Around 40 per cent of African savings are kept outside the continent.

• For every US$2 Africa currently receives in aid, it pays back nearly US$1 in debt repayments.

On trade…

• Africa has seen its share of world trade fall from six per cent in 1980 to less than two per cent in 2002.

• Every cow in Europe receives almost US$2 a day in subsidies, double the average income in Africa.

• From 1980 to 2000, the price of major African exports fell dramatically; sugar by 77 per cent, cocoa by 71 per cent, coffee by 64 per cent and cotton by 47 per cent.

• Tariffs on peanuts coming into the US from Africa are 132 per cent.

On resources…

• The United States is poised to take as much as 25 per cent of its oil from Africa within the next 10 years.

On growth…

• The rate of economic growth exceeded 5 per cent in 24 separate countries in sub-Saharan Africa in 2003.

On living in Africa…

• According to a BBC World survey, in nearly every country in Africa, at least 9 in 10 are proud to be African.

• Africa loses an average of 70,000 skilled personnel a year to developed countries; Zambia has lost all but 400 of its 1,600 doctors in recent years.

• Some 37 per cent of Africans now live in cities and that figure will rise to more than 50 per cent over the next 20 years.

• In cities like Nairobi 60 per cent of the people live on just five per cent of the land.

• In Ethiopia the government recently agreed a ruling with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which gave farmers permission to work on 160 days a year which had previously been thought of as religious festivals; agricultural productivity has since risen by more than 20 per cent a year.

On communication…

• The use of mobile phones is increasing much faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world; 75 per cent of all telephones in Africa are mobile.

• Phone cards have become a form of currency by which money can be sent from the rich world to Africa without incurring commission charges; Africans in the developed world are buying pre-paid cards and sending them to their relatives back home, who then sell the cards to others.

• In the Congo, because there is no working postal service, people leave letters in Catholic churches to be transmitted to other parts of the Congo; the Church provides the only coherent nationwide infrastructure.

• Studies show that when 20 per cent of a population has the ability to exchange news and ideas through access to cellphones and text messaging, dictatorial or totalitarian regimes find it hard to retain power.