Africa continues to dwarf the rest of the world in how the region has been affected by AIDS. Africa is home to 70% of the adults and 80% of the children living with HIV in the world. The estimated number of newly infected adults and children in Africa reached 3.4 million at the end of 2001. It has also been estimated that 28.1 million adults and children were livingwith HIV/AIDS in Africa by the end of the year. AIDS deaths totalled 3 million globally in 2001, and of the global total 2.3 million AIDS deaths occurred in Africa.

In sub-Saharan Africa HIV is now deadlier than war itself. In 1998,200,000 Africans died in war, but more than 2 million died ofAIDS. AIDS has become a full-blown development crisis. Its social and economic consequences are felt widely not only in health but in education, industry, agriculture, transport, human resources and the economy in general.

The overall incidence of HIV infection in Africa does however now appear to be stabilizing. Because the long-standing African epidemics have already reached large numbers of people whose behavior exposes them to HIV, and because effective prevention measures in some countries have enabled people to reduce their risk of exposure, the annual number of new infections has stabilized or even fallen in many countries. These decreases have now begun to balance out the still-rising infection rates in other parts of Africa, particularly the southern part of the continent. Overall,the total of 3.8 million infected people in 2000 was slightly less than the regional total of 4.0 million in 1999.But this trend willnot continue if countries such as Nigeria begin experiencing a rapid increase.