Transcriber: Yulia Kallistratova Reviewer: Denise RQ
We're here today
because United Nations have defined goals
for the progress of countries.
They are called Millennium Development Goals.
Look here: you have to end poverty,
education, gender, child and maternal health,
control infections, protect the environment,
and get good global links between nations
in every aspect, from aid to trade.
There is a second reason I like these development goals,
and that is because each and every one is measured.
Take child mortality.
The aim here is to reduce child mortality with two-thirds from 1990 to 2015.
That's a 4% reduction per year.
But then I hear people say: "There is no progress in Africa.
And there's not even statistics on Africa to know what is happening."
I'll prove them wrong on both points!
(Laughter)
And look here, when I take you into my bubble graphs.
I give you Congo, which was high, Ghana lower, and Kenya even lower.
And what has happened over the years since then?
Here we go.
You can see, with the independence, literacy improved,
and vaccinations started, smallpox was eradicated,
hygiene was improved, and things got better.
But then, in the '80s, watch out here:
Congo got into civil war, and they leveled off here.
Ghana got very high fast, this was the backlash in Kenya,
and Ghana bypassed, but then, Kenya and Ghana went down together,
still standstill in Congo.
That's where we are today.
You can see, it doesn't make sense to make averages
of this series' improvement, and this very fast improvement.
Time has come to stop thinking about sub-Saharan Africa as one place.
The countries are so different.
And they merit to be recognized in the same way,
as we don't talk about Europe as one place.
Let me show the wider picture.
My country, Sweden, in 1800, we were up there.
And then, you see, these were famine years,
these were bad years and people got fed up with Sweden.
My own ancestors moved to the United States, you know,
and eventually, soon they started to get better and better here.
And here we've got better education, and we've got health service,
and child mortality came down.
We never had a war, Sweden was in peace all this time.
But look, the rate of lowering in Sweden was not fast.
Sweden achieved a low child mortality because we started early.
We had primary school actually starting in 1842.
And then you get that wonderful effect
when we got female literacy one generation later.
You have to realize
that the investments we do in progress are long-term investments.
Let me now bring you to a wider picture.
A wider picture of child mortality,
the relation between child mortality and family size.
This is once again, 1960. 50 years ago.
Each bubble is a country; the size of the bubble is the population.
These are the so-called 'developing countries.'
They had high or very high child mortality and family size 6 to 8.
And the ones over there, they were the so-called Western countries.
They had low child mortality and small families.
What has happened?
What I want you to see now with your own eyes is the relation
between the fall in child mortality and the decrease in family size.
Here we come down with eradication of smallpox,
better education, health service.
You've got China down there, it comes in into the Western box here.
(Laughter)
And here, Brazil is in the Western box, India is approaching,
the first African countries are coming into the Western box.
And we get a lot of new neighbors, welcome to a decent life,
come on, we want everyone down here!
This is the vision we have, isn't is?
And look, the first African countries here are coming in.
There we are today.
There's no such thing as a 'Western world' and a 'developing world.'
And of course,
lowering child mortality is a matter of utmost importance
from humanitarian aspects.
It's a decent life for children we are talking about.
But it is also a strategic investment in the future of all mankind
because it's about the environment.
We will not be able to manage the environment
and avoid the terrible climate crisis
if we don't stabilize the world population.
Let's be clear about that.
And the way to do that is to get child mortality down,
get access to family planning,
and behind that, a drive of female education.
And that is fully possible, let's do it.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)