Uganda was featured on this TedTalks talk by Emily Oster.

Fact: Uganda is one of the few (if not the only) countries in Africa that’s been successful in its fight against AIDS bringing it down from 16% in early 90s to less than 5% in 2001.

Assumption: this mainly was due to the govt. successful implementation of ABC – Abstinence, Being faithful and Condom use program across the country. Credit to M7 on this.

Emily’s theory: Rather than ABC, this success was due to decreased economic activity in the country i.e. increased economic activity in a country increases the spread of AIDS.

She backs it up with an analysis that during this period, Uganda’s coffee exports had gone down tremendously.

To her credit, she does pad this seemingly outrageous reasoning with other factors like value of life i.e. In Africa, the avg. person has no incentive to have protected sex since

1.       There is already a high mortality rate and low life expectancy

2.       Chances are that if AIDS doesn’t get you, something else soon will..Malaria, car accident, politicians.

So there is no incentive to fight AIDS since it is a losing battle.

More on this talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/emily_oster_flips_our_thinking_on_aids_in_africa.html