Literature Review: Aids and the Accumulation of Human Capital in Africa

The HIV/AIDS pandemic has, especially within the past decade, become an issue of grave concern for Africans. According to UNAIDS, by the end of 1999, over twelve million African children had lost at least their mothers to AIDS. Education or lack thereof, is only one of the many aspects of life that have adversely affected these children because of the disease. These effects themselves are a result of the children either being orphaned, and thus dropping out of school, or losing their teachers. The decline in the provision of quality education for African children only worsens the plight of the continent. Recognizing education to be an important factor in a country’s development, some authors like Hamoudi and Birdsall, (2004) amongst others, have studied the effects of this pandemic on human capital in Africa.

In their article, they explore the effects of the AIDS pandemic in Africa in connection with the continent’s ability to foster an environment suitable for education and, consequently, for growth. Hamoudi and Birdsall recognize that there exists a relationship between the emergence of the AIDS pandemic and the production and use of education in Africa; they research this relationship from four different channels.

First, Hamoudi and Birdsall look at the effect of the deaths of millions of adults on the continent’s ability to find and retain teachers. This is due to the fact that teachers constitute a significant proportion of the number of infected adults. The incidence of infected teachers further restricts the rate at which education systems on the continent are able to train future generations. They term this the “supply side.” The second channel which the authors name the “demand side” is the impact a reduction in the lifespan in Africa, will have on the incentive to get an education. The reasoning behind this channel is that, a decrease in the life expectancy of a population results in a subsequent decrease in the expected benefits of education, which...