Journal of Research in Peace, Gender and Development (ISSN: 2251-0036) Vol. 2(5) pp. 104-114, May 2012
Available online@ http://www.interesjournals.org/JRPGD
Copyright ©2012 International Research Journals
Full Length Research Paper
Digital Mapping and Analysis of African Women and
Girls Data of the 2011 Population Reference Bureau
Ikusemoran Mayomi1 and Yagana Muhammad Aji2
1
Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System Unit Department of Geography, University of Maiduguri,
Nigeria
2
Population and Gender Unit Department of Geography University of Maiduguri, Nigeria
Accepted 23 March, 2012
The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) is an organization that informs people around the world about
population, health, and environment, and empowers them to use that information to advance the wellbeing of current and future generations. Annually, the bureau publishes data in tabular form on the
demography, health, education and work/public life on women and girls on each of the countries in the
world. In this paper, data on female population, fertility rate, percentage female economically active
age, percentage of births attended by skilled personnel, percentage female literacy rate, percentage
female schools enrolments, percentage female in parliaments, percentage female HIV/AIDS patients as
well as female maternal death and use of modern contraceptive were selected from the world’s 2011
data sheet on women and girls in African countries only. ArcGIS software was used to map and
analyze each of the items. It was revealed that digital presentation and analysis of data are better than
tabular presentation because sorting, selection and analysis are easily achieved through the use of
Sequential Query Language (SQL) of the ArcGIS software. The generated maps also revealed that the
women in North and Southern African countries are more developed than the West, East and Central
Africa. It was recommended that PRB should embrace the use of GIS to present their subsequent data
in digital form in order to meet the current global age of Information and Communication Technology.
Keywords: Database, data analysis, geographical information system and digital mapping.
INTRODUCTION
One of the most serious problems affecting research
activities all over the world is the problems of inadequate
data. No matter the researcher’s level and sophistication
of technology, no matter how knowledgeable he is in his
discipline and no matter how much fund is made
available, if the needed data for any research is
insufficient or totally unavailable, no meaningful research
can take place. It is as a result of this problem of
inadequate data that some individuals, organizations and
some government establishments have taken it upon
themselves to make data available to all the stake
holders in some selected sectors of the world’s economy.
The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) is one of such
*Corresponding Author E-mail: princemayomi@yahoo.com;
Tel: +23408076854995
organizations that informs people around the world about
population, health, and environment, and empowers them
to use that information to advance the well-being of
current and future generations (PRB 2011). It was
categorically stated in the PRB (2011) data sheet that
one of the objectives of the Bureau is to ensure that
evidence-based publications get to the right people; that
is, the policy makers, advocates, researchers and media.
In recent times, importance has been placed on the
world’s women and girls who have hitherto been
relegated in most countries as second fiddle. This has led
to women liberation and emancipation all over the world
as Aji and Bukar (2009) noted that women constitute
about 50% of any society, and when they are relegated to
the background, much productivity is lost as improving
women’s opportunities can enhance national growth by
enhancing a country’s stock of human capital and
thereby maximizing output. It is the realization of this fact
that national and international efforts have been made to
Mayomi and Aji 105
liberate, improve, and emancipate women and girls in
recent times. According to the Beacon (2007) in Aji and
Bukar (2009), several international conferences and
conventions have been held with the aim of helping the
women and girl-child out of her predicament among
which are: the 1960 UNESCO convention against
discrimination in education, the 1975 Mexico world
conference on the status of women, the 1979 convention
for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against
women (CEDAW), the 1985 UN Nairobi Forward Looking
Strategies for the advancement of women and children,
and the 1995 Beijing world conference on women.
One of the contributions of the Population Reference
Bureau is the annual publications of data on women and
girls which many individuals, organizations, institutions
and the government depend on for policy and decision
making on matters that concern women and girls. In the
2011 publication, the data were provided on the women
and girls on demography, reproductive health, education,
and work/public life. The data not only cover all the
continents of the world but were also classified into their
various regions. In this paper, Geographic Information
System (GIS) technique was used to map and analyze
the African data on women and girls which were
extracted from the entire PRB data that were presented
only in tabular form. Alka (2000) defined GIS as a system
of computer hardware and software for capturing, sorting,
storing, checking, integrating, manipulating, analysing
and displaying data which are spatially referenced to the
earth. With GIS, it is possible to map, model, query, and
analyze large quantities of data all held together within a
single database because GIS stores virtually information
found on paper map or tables and also provide detailed
information about their features with their attributes which
cannot be manually possible through the creation of
digital maps. Adegoke (2010) defined digital mapping as
a computer-based mapping process involving production
of maps from spatial data held in numeric-form rather
than in graphical or analogue form. Digital map utilizes
modern computerized digital system in improving the
conventional system of information representation with
the capabilities of taking over most of the task that are
normally performed by the human operators in a
conventional mapping process in order to quicken map
production and thus increase interpretability and
productivity
Statement of the Problem
The world’s women and girls’ 2011 data sheet that was
published by PRB and aimed at informing people around
the world about population, health, and environment, and
empowers them to use that information to advance the
well-being of current and future generations were
unfortunately presented only in tabular form. Tabular
information especially when large data like the PRB data
are involved is often difficult to interpret or analyse.
Moreover, comparisons among the components of the
database might also be tedious. Therefore, digital maps
are easy to interpret and comparisons among the
component units can also be easily derived. In addition,
spatial and non- spatial queries for simple analysis can
also be performed on the GIS database. The ability to
manipulate and analyse spatial data through appropriate
software, is an important characteristic of GIS and thus a
major attribute that distinguishes it from computer
mapping system. Digital maps are generated through GIS
techniques as demonstrated in this paper.
Aim and Objectives
The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate the use of
GIS technique for creation of digital mapping and
analysis, using the 2011 PRB data sheet as data input.
The specific objectives include:
♦
to create digital mapping of Africa using the 2011
PRB data on World’s Women and Girls data sheet,
which can easily be interpreted and communicated better
than the usual tabular data that are usually presented by
the Bureau.
♦ to demonstrate simple analysis such as the use of
SQL to query, sort and select both spatial and attribute
data on maps and database as to show the merits of
digital mapping on tabular data
The Study Area
Africa is located between latitude 37 ͦ N and 35 ͦ S of the
equator and longitude 17 ͦ W and 51 ͦ E of the Greenwich
Meridian (Ajayi 2003). It is bounded in the North by the
Mediterranean Sea which separates the continent from
Europe. Africa is bounded in the West and South by the
Atlantic Ocean and India Ocean in the East, while the
Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Eden bound the
continent in the North East (Figure 1). Africa is almost
bisected by the Equator. Among all the seven continents
of the world, Africa is the second largest after Asia. It has
a land area of about 30.3 million square kilometres. The
continent occupies about a quarter of the world total land
area. It is about three times the size of Europe, while the
combination of the land area of Canada and USA
represent about three-fifth of the total area of Africa. The
continent stretches from about 8000km from Bizerte in
Tunisia in the north to Cape of Good Hope in South
Africa in the south and about 7500km from Dakar in the
West to Cape Gardaful in the East. Africa currently
comprised of more than fifty countries including the
recent southern Sudan.
According to Ajayi (2003), the north-west and the
southern Africa are occupied by Fold Mountains such as
the Atlas Mountain in the north-west and Drakensberg
106 J. Res. Peace Gend. Dev.
Figure 1. The Study Area
Sources of Data
Mountains in the south. The Great Rift Valley of Africa is
located in the Eastern part of the continent. The rift valley
is the home of Lakes Rudoff, Albert, Edward, Tangayika
and other small ones. Among the numerous rivers in
Africa, the five important ones in term of volume and
length are River Nile (6600km), River Zaire (4660km),
River Niger (4200km), River Zambezi (2400km) and
River Orange (1600km). Africa is said to be the warmest
of all the continents because large part of the continent
has average temperature of over 20 ͦ C for over nine
months of the year. The coastal part of West Africa, the
Nile basin, and the industrial area of Johannesburg and
Durban are some of the densely populated areas, while
the Sahara and the mountainous areas are sparsely
populated.
The map of Africa, that is, the base map was acquired
from Macmillan Nigeria Secondary Atlas (Dada et al
2006) which is one of the recent Atlases that contains the
current countries in Africa. Twelve items were selected
from the four sectors of Demographic, Reproductive
Health, Education and Work/Public Life of the World’s
Women and Girls 2011 Data Sheet as data input for this
paper. Some of the items in the data were not selected
because there were no data for so many countries in
some items, some data were represented with symbol
and not figures, some items have old and recent data,
hence, the recent ones were selected. The items that
were selected from each sector are highlighted below:
MATERIALS AND METHODS
1
ArcGIS 9.2 was the main GIS software that was used in
this paper. All the output maps were imported through
CorelDraw 12 into Microsoft Word, 2007. The following
hardware was also used for data capture: an HP laptop,
Scan express A3 USB and HP 5100 colour printer.
(a) Female Population at mid-2011 in millions in each
country. This was represented by “Fem_Pop” on the
attribute table
(b) Total Fertility Rate. This is the total number of
women within the reproductive ages 15 and 49 in each
Demography
Mayomi and Aji 107
country. “Age_15-49” was used to represent the total
fertility age. Lifetime Births per Women. This is also
known as the total fertility rate (TFR), the average
number of children a woman would have assuming that
current age-specific fertility rates remain constant
throughout her child bearing years which is usually
considered to be ages 15-49. This was coded with
“Life_Birth” on the table
2
Reproductive Health
(a) Percentage of Married Women using Modern
Contraceptives. The percentage of married or “in union”
women ages 15 to 49 who are using modern
contraceptives which include clinic and supply methods
such as the pill, injectables, implants, IUD, condom, and
sterilization. “Mod_Contra” was the code that was used
for this item
(b) Percentage of Births attended by Skilled Personnel.
Skilled personal here include, doctors, nurses, and
midwives. This was represented with “Birth_Skil” on the
table.
(c)
Maternal deaths per 100,000 Live births in 2008.
The most recent data here is that of the 2008. PRB
defines this maternal death as also known as the
maternal mortality ratio, the number of deaths to women
per 100,000 live births that result from conditions related
to pregnancy, delivery, and related complications.
“Mat_Death” was the coded used for the item.
(d)
Percentage of adults ages 15-49 with HIV/AIDS
in 2009. This item was coded with “HIV_AIDS”.
3
Education
(a) Percentage female literate ages 15-24 from data
generated between 2005 and 2008. This is also known
as the youth literacy rate, that is, the percentage of the
population ages 15 to 24 who can both read and write,
with understanding , a short simple statement on
everyday life. This item was coded with “Fem_Litera”.
(b) Female Primary School Completion Rate from
2005 and 2010: The PRB reported that a proxy measure
was used, representing the total number of new entrants
in the last grade of primary education, regardless of age,
expressed as a percentage of the total population of the
theoretical entrance age to the last grade of primary. This
item was coded with “Fem_Prim_S”.
(c)
Percentage female enrolment in secondary school
between 2005 and 2010. That is, the ratio of the female
number of students enrolled in secondary school to the
female population in the applicable age group 9such as
ages 12-17) for the country(gross enrolment ratio). It can
exceed 100 when the number of students currently
enrolled exceeds the population of the relevant age
group. This item was coded with “Female_Sec”.
4
Work/Public Life
(a)
Percentage female economically active ages 15
and above. It is the proportion of the population over age
15 that is classified as either employed or unemployed;
that is, all those who supply labour or are available for
labour.”Eco_Activ” was used as the code for the item
(b)
Women as percentage of parliament. This means
the percentage of seats in the single or lower chamber of
the national parliament held by women. This item was
coded with “Parliament”
Data Capture
The acquired Africa map was scanned and exported to
ArcGis 9.2 GIS software at where the map was carefully
georeferenced and the countries and other interested
features were digitized. The theme table was also
created with female population, female fertility rate,
percentage female economically active age, percentage
of births attended by skilled personnel, percentage
female literacy rate, percentage female schools
enrolments,
percentage female in
parliaments,
percentage female HIV/AIDS patients as well as female
maternal death and use of modern contraceptives as the
fields in the theme table, while each of the countries in
Africa has their records in each field. Queries and
analysis of the output map were done through the select
by attribute module of the options menu of the theme
table.
The graduated colour module of the quantity menu of
the properties of the layer in ArcGIS was used for the
classification and mapping of the data among the
countries in the Africa. This software has the capability of
breaking data into as many classes as desired. However,
in this paper, considering the many numbers of the
countries in Africa, five classes were used. Actual figures
were also used in the legend instead of categories so as
to portray the real values of each of the items.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Mapping of African Data
The generated maps for each of the twelve items are
presented from figures 2 to 13
Analysis of Data
A theme table that comprised all the information on the
twelve items were created. Each of the items was used
as a field while the information on each country in each of
the fields contains the records (Table 1). It was from this
theme table that analysis of the data was made. For
108 J. Res. Peace Gend. Dev.
Figure 2. Total female population
Figure 4. Life birth per women
Figure 6. Percentage of women attended by
skilled personnel
Figure 3. Percentage female fertility rate
Figure 5. Percentage of women using modern
contraceptives
Figure 7. Maternal death per 100,000 per birth
Mayomi and Aji 109
Figure 8. Percentage of adult female with HIV/AIDS
Figure 10. Percentage female primary school
enrolment
Figure 12. Percentage female economically active age
Figure 9. Percentage female literacy rate
Figure 11. Percentage female secondary school
enrolment
Figure 13. Percentage female members of parliament
110 J. Res. Peace Gend. Dev.
Table 1. Theme Table of the PRB 2011 Women and Girls Data
instance, the female population (fem pop) was selected
through the (SQL) of ArcGIS and sorted in descending
order through the use of select by attributes modules of
the theme table. The table revealed that Nigeria,
Ethiopia, Egypt, Congo Democratic Republic and South
Africa (with 80.7, 43.8, 42.7, 35.1 and 25.7 female
population in millions respectively) were the highest five
female population in Africa (Table 1). The table is a
demonstration that digital analysis is better than the use
of only table for data analysis. SQL queries, automatic
selection and sorting are some of the strong weapons of
GIS techniques which make it to have edge on analogue
tabular analysis.
Moreover, the sorting or selections that were made on
the table were also automatically reflected on the digital
map. For instance, figure 14 shows the countries with
less than 1million female population in Africa queried,
selected and sorted in the same way with that of table 1.
It was revealed that thirteen countries have their female
populations lower than 1 million with Guinea Bissau (0.9
million), Gambia (0.9 million and Gabon (0.8 million) at
the top while Cape Verde (0.3 million), Sao Tome and
Principe (0.1 million) and Western Sahara with no data
were the least (Figure 14).
Complex analysis such as sorting out of the countries
with female population more than two million people but
with less than 1% HIV/AIDS percentage rates was also
demonstrated (Table 2). This could be used to determine
the countries with high population but with low HIV/AIDS
percentage rate. Most of the selected countries are North
and East African countries such as Morocco, Tunisia,
Algeria and Egypt in the North as well as Eritrea, Sudan,
Ethiopia and Somalia in the East. Comparing Table 2
with the HIV/AIDS column of Table, it can be deduced
that the selected countries in Table 2, were also the
same countries with less HIV/AIDS percentage rate in
Table 1. Therefore, HIV/AIDS infection can be concluded
to be less in the populous countries of East and North
African countries. This quick analysis through complex
sorting and selection is difficult if analogue tables as was
presented by the PRB are to be used
According to Waugh (2005), HIV/AIDS has become
the fourth most common cause of death of the 14th
century. Some 95% of those infected live in developing
countries, and 70% reside in sub-Saharan Africa. In that
hardest-hit region, as much as one-fourth of the adult
population in some countries is HIV positive and life
expectancy has been cut drastically. In South Africa, the
st
life expectancy of a baby born in early 21 century should
be 66 years; AIDS has cut that to 47. In Botswana, it is
36 years instead of 70; in Zimbabwe the decline has
been to 43 years from 69. Overall, sub-Saharan life ex-
Mayomi and Aji 111
Figure 14. Selected countries with less than 1million female population
Table 2. Selected countries with more than 2million female population and less than 1% percentage HIV/AIDS rate
No Data
pectancies have been cut by 15 years, and total
population by 2015 is now projected to be 60 million less
than it would have been in the absence of the disease.
WHO 1992 in Waugh (2005) mapped the estimated
global distribution of adult HIV infections in January 1992.
Three types of patterns were highlighted; the first is
referred to as pattern 1 which extensive spread occurred
in late 1970s predominantly among the homosexual and
intravenous drug-using community. The affected
countries in Africa are: South Africa, Lesotho and
Swaziland. Pattern 2 spread in the whole Western,
Eastern and Central Africa. The spread in this pattern
also occurred in late 1970s but predominantly among the
homosexual transmission, vertical transmission from
mother to child and transmission via contaminated blood
and blood products are also important routes. In pattern
3, HIV infection was introduced later, probably in the
1980s by travellers and also by imported infected blood
and blood products. The North African countries
(Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt) were
affected by pattern 3.
It is interesting to note that the current status of HIV
infections in Africa still follows the 1992 WHO pattern as
South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland which
were all grouped under pattern 1, are still the leading HIV
infected countries in the continent (Figure 8). North Afri-
112 J. Res. Peace Gend. Dev.
can countries which include Algeria, Egypt, Libya,
Morocco and Tunisia (pattern 3 group where HIV
infections were introduced latter than the other parts of
the continent) were the least infected countries (Figure
8). It was revealed in this study that countries (Namibia,
Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe) which
share boundaries with South African countries are now
heavily infected are currently ranked second to the most
infected areas (Figure 8) probably because of their
proximity to the most infected countries.
High maternal mortality is another serious problem
confronting African countries. African contributes about
47% of global maternal mortality. Among the six countries
that have contributed to nearly half of world maternal
deaths, three of them (Ethiopia, Nigeria and the
Democratic Republic of Congo) are in Africa, and the
highest rates are found in Sub-Saharan Africa countries.
This is mainly related to the three delays to providing
obstetric care: acceptability, accessibility and availability
(Abdoulaye, 2006). Alveraz in Science Daily of March 2,
2010 reported that in year 2000, the United Nations
estimated that the number of women who died during
pregnancy or shortly after birth was 529,000 (almost one
maternal death per minute), of which less than 1%
occurred in industrialised countries. According to the
Science Daily, the three countries with the highest
maternal death rates are India (136,000), Nigeria
(37,000) and Afghanistan (20,000). The highest maternal
mortality rates are in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, with
2,000 and 1,900 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live
births, respectively. This means that 99% of maternal
deaths occurred in less industrialized nations of which
Africa belongs. Moreover, Nigeria which has the largest
female population in Africa (Figure 2) ranked second in
the world’s maternal death rate. Alveraz obtained and
studied data from 45 African countries between 1997 and
2006 from the World Health Organization (WHO), the
World Bank, the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF) and the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP). In his findings, the main causes of
death are haemorrhaging (34%), infection (10%), preeclampsia (9%) and obstruction during birth (4%). These
figures differ from those in industrialised countries, where
death from haemorrhaging accounts for 13% of deaths.
There are also indirect causes that, although they are not
complications relating to the birth itself, become worse
over the course of the pregnancy and cause 20% of the
deaths. He concluded that despite the significant
differences between countries, the number of maternal
deaths was high in all African countries at an average of
885 deaths for each 100,000 births, but these women are
not dying as a result of any disease, but just from normal
biological processes. The main causes of death are
haemorrhaging (34%), infection (10%), pre-eclampsia
(9%) and obstruction during birth (4%). These figures
differ from those in industrialised countries, where death
from haemorrhaging accounts for 13% of deaths. There
are also indirect causes that, although they are not
complications relating to the birth itself, become worse
over the course of the pregnancy and cause 20% of the
deaths. In Figure 8, Somalia, Burundi, Chad, Liberia and
Guinea Bissau were revealed to have the highest
maternal death rate in Africa, while North African
countries have the least.
The problem of maternal death is usually related to the
numbers of births attended by skilled personnel. WHO
(2008) defines a skilled attendant as “an accredited
health professional – such as a midwife, doctor or nurse
– who has been educated and trained to proficiency in
the skills needed to manage normal (uncomplicated)
pregnancies, childbirth and the immediate postnatal
period, and in the identification, management and referral
of complications in women and newborns”. According to
the WHO (2008) report, 34% of deliveries worldwide have
no skilled attendant. This means 45 million births
occurring at home without skilled health personnel each
year. Skilled attendants assist in more than 99% of births
in more developed countries with just 62% in developing
countries. Although the proportion of births assisted by
skilled attendants has been steadily rising from 47% in
1990 to 62% currently, progress needs to be accelerated.
Sub-Saharan Africa, South- East Asia and the Caribbean
are furthest away from achieving the universal coverage
agreed on by WHO Member States in 2005. In Figure 6,
South and North African countries have higher skilled
attendants than the other regions of the continent. For
instance, Figure 6 shows that only Egypt and Morocco
have less skilled attendants in all the North African
countries, but WHO (2008) reported that between 1983
and 2000, Egypt doubled the proportion of deliveries
assisted by skilled birth attendants and reduced its
maternal mortality ratio by 50%. No wonder in 2011
(Figure 6) Egypt now has higher skilled births than
Morocco. However, according to experts having skilled
attendance alone is not enough. It is also a question of
how professionals perform and behave (Bergstrom, 2001;
Buekens, 2001 in De Brouwere and Van Lerberghe,
2001). It is indicated that at a given income level, the
degree to which staff attend to the needs of their clients
makes a great difference. Therefore, in addition to
increasing skilled attendance, all efforts must be made to
improve
accountability
for
performance
and
responsiveness to client needs in Africa.
The literacy rate in Africa is still averagely low in most
countries (Figure 9). While the North African countries
(Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria) and South African countries
(Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe,
and Swaziland) are considered to be highly literate other
parts of the continent are low in literacy level (figure 6).
From the database of the UNESCO (2008), Lesotho,
Reunion (which has no data in 2011 (Table 1),
Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia were the five
highest literacy rates in Africa based on the 2005
UNESCO data. Meanwhile, Somalia, Burkina Faso,
Mayomi and Aji 113
Table 3. Female Participation in Parliament
Regions
Single/Lower House
Europe OSCE member countries including Nordic
Countries
Europe OSCE member countries excluding
Nordic Countries
Americas
Sub-Sahara Africa
Asia
Pacific
Arab States
Both Houses
22.2%
Upper
House/Senate
19.9%
20.3%
19.9%
20.2%
22.0%
19.5%
18.3%
12.4%
10.9%
23.1%
19.3%
15.2%
32.6%
7.5%
22.2%
19.4%
18.0%
14.7%
10.3%
21.7%
Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union 2011
Guinea, Angola and Benin Republic were at the rear
which still reflects in Figure 9. It can therefore be
concluded that North African countries of Egypt, Tunisia
and Algeria which were not among highest literacy rate
countries in 2005 have now joined those at the top.
The level of women participation in the parliament in
Africa is quite encouraging. For instance, Figure 13
shows the percentage female membership of parliament.
In the figure, only Guinea, Madagascar and Egypt show
very low percentage parliamentary membership. This
was supported by the data compiled by the InterParliamentary Union (2011) based on the information
provided by National Parliaments by 31 July 2011. In the
data, 187 countries were classified by descending order
of the percentage of women in the lower or single house.
Three African countries made the first ten with Rwanda
as first in the world with 53.6% in the lower house and
34.6% in the upper house. South Africa came fourth with
44.5% in the lower house and 29.6 in the upper house,
while Mozambique came tenth with 39.2% in the lower
house. Angola, Tanzania, and Kenya also made the first
twenty. The data revealed that the countries with high
female participation were all in Southern part of Africa.
No countries in the west and Northern part of the
continent made the first twenty which is a challenge to
these regions to raise their level of women participation in
parliament. In the same data, regional averages were
also computed as shown in table 3. The table shows that
Sub-Sahara Africa is fourth out of the seven regions with
total percentage of 19.4% in both houses which is close
to Americas with 22.2% in both houses. All these facts
show that female participation in the parliament is high if
compared with the other regions of the world.
Figures 10 and 11 revealed that primary and
secondary schools enrolment is high only in north and
South African countries (Libya has no data on Primary
school enrolment). Enrolments especially in secondary
schools in the other parts of the continent are very low
(Figures 10 and 11). This finding confirms the earlier
report of UNESCO (2006), which researched into the
average primary school Non Enrolment Rate (NER) at
the level of the 10 Millenniums Development Goals
regions by calculating the regional averages, the primary
NER in each country was weighted by the country's
population of primary school age. In 6 of the 10 regions,
the primary school NER was at or above 90%: developed
countries (96%), Commonwealth of Independent States
(90%), Eastern Asia (99%), South-eastern Asia (94%),
Northern Africa (94%), and Latin America and the
Caribbean (94%). In Oceania, the NER is 86%, in
Southern Asia it is 87%, and in Western Asia 83%. In
Sub-Saharan Africa, far fewer children go to school; in
this region, the primary NER is 67%. In 7 countries, all in
Africa or the Middle East, less than half of all primary-age
children are enrolled in primary school: Djibouti (primary
NER 32%), Niger (39%), Burkina Fast (41%), Sudan
(43%), Guinea-Bissau (45%), Eritrea (46%) and Mali
(47%).
CONCLUSION
The significance of the use of GIS for mapping and
creation of database has been demonstrated in this
paper specifically in the area of spatial distribution of all
the selected twelve items in the continent which can
assist policy makers in the targeting of interventions or
developmental programmes having known what is where
from the generated maps. Proper allocation of resources
especially requires (Adeniyi, 1997), spatial and temporal
information about their location, extent, quality and
capacity: analysis tools for integrated analysis and their
potentials; and establishment of alternatives and their
impacts. GIS technique can be used for the improvement
in the collection of relevant spatial and temporal data for
virtually all demography, reproductive health, education
and work/public life sectors in the PRB. GIS has the
capabilities of creating database for all the sectors in a
single database and yet, perform all the necessary spatial
searches for each sector or item as has been
demonstrated in this paper. GIS is a tool which facilitates
the processing of all types of digital spatial information
114 J. Res. Peace Gend. Dev.
with the capability of displaying the results
cartographically. The use of this technique saves time,
very accurate, high visual impression, easy to update or
edit and very reliable.
It can be concluded from the maps from Figures 2 to
13 that North African countries are more developed in
most of the mapped sectors. For instance, all the
countries in the region except Egypt has high fertility
rates (Figure 3), all the countries except Libya use
modern contraceptives (Figure 5), except Morocco and
Egypt the countries in the region are being attended to by
skilled personal during birth (Figure 6). The region also
has high female literacy rate (Figure 9), as well as high
female school enrolment especially secondary school
when compared with other African countries (Figures 10
and 11). With all these developments, the region has low
HIV/AIDS patients (Figure 8) and low maternal death
(Figure 7). However, the female economic active
percentage and the female percentage in the parliament
are low (Figures 12 and 13). Southern part of Africa also
has high use of modern contraceptives high attendant by
skilled personnel during birth, high percentage of school
female enrolment and literacy rates and high female
members of the parliament. However, the region has very
high female HIV/AIDS patients than all the other regions
in the continent. All the other regions such as the West,
East and Central African continent has negative results in
almost the items that were analysed.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The use of analogue and tabular techniques for data
presentation and analysis for a world class data Bureau
known for data generation and presentation is outdated
especially in the modern day when Information and
Communication Technology has been a strong weapon
for sustainable development. The Staff of the Bureau
should be encouraged to welcome GIS technique as well
as to be trained on the technique so as to improve their
data presentation in digital maps in order to match the
global ICT age. The Western, Eastern and Central
African countries which are currently lagging behind the
North and Southern regions in women developments
should leave no stone unturned to ensure developments
like their north and Southern counterparts.
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