Envisioning a Healthy Future: Africa's Shifting Burden of Disease

Africa has the highest prevalence of communicable diseases in the world. In 2015, more than three times as many people died from AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than ten times as many people died from malaria as in the rest of the world combined. Non-communicable diseases are also increasing on the continent. This paper uses the International Futures forecasting system to explore the effects on human development of Africa’s achieving targets 3.3 and 3.4 of the Sustainable Development Goals: respectively, eradication of selected communicable diseases, and a reduction in premature deaths from non-communicable diseases by one-third by 2030.