Tobacco production, use, and exposure negatively impact countries’ health, environment, and economies. Increasingly, this burden is falling on low- and middle-income countries targeted by the industry for increased consumption and production. Given that Sub-Saharan Africa is still in the early stages of a tobacco epidemic, African countries have a critical window of opportunity to take urgent action to implement and enforce effective tobacco control policies and practices.
Some of the most significant challenges, however, are limited awareness and political commitment to address these negative effects of tobacco.
To this end, eight African Sciences Academies i.e. Uganda, Kenya, Senegal, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria, under the leadership of the Network of African Science Academies (NASAC), with Technical support from US National Academies (USNAS) partnered together to inform, engage and mobilize high-level African Leadership to prioritize tobacco control for the mitigation of the impending tobacco epidemic in Africa. To achieve these goals, the partnership convened a 16-person expert committee of some of Africa’s top scientists, international tobacco control leaders, and policymakers. The outcome is the consensus report titled “Preventing a Tobacco epidemic in Africa. A call for effective action to support health, social and economic development.”
In this report, the committee assessed the evidence on tobacco use and production in Africa and the resulting detrimental health, economic and environmental effects. The committee also reviewed the efforts currently underway to prevent and control tobacco use, including the status of adoption and ratification of the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Based on this evidence, the committee reached a consensus on the actions that African leaders and other stakeholders should take to combat this growing threat.
This report clearly outlines the strong scientific evidence on which the recommendations are based, and is a powerful tool for use by stakeholders such as government ministries of health, finance, gender, labor, and social development, legislative bodies like Parliament, Advocacy groups like CSOs and NGOs, Development Partners, Multilateral agencies and media houses; in sharing the responsibility of protecting those most vulnerable to misleading and deceitful messaging by the tobacco industry.
Indeed, this report was a key tool used in the parliamentary debate in drafting the Uganda Tobacco Control Act 2015.
