In December 2007, the Research for International Tobacco Control (RITC) program of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), launched a two-year initiative to understand the critical determinants of success for tobacco control in ten to fourteen Sub-Saharan Africa countries.  The findings of this initiative were to inform the development, implementation and enforcement of tobacco control policy interventions across Africa.

 

Existing limited evidence indicates that the majority of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are in the early stages of the tobacco epidemic. In recent years, however, tobacco consumption in Africa has increased faster than in the developing world as a whole.  The majority of governments in Sub-Saharan Africa are aware of the looming tobacco epidemic and its potential for thwarting the development process.   Many have already shown their commitment to change by ratifying the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) protocol. As parties to the WHO FCTC, these countries are obliged to develop and execute a national tobacco control action plan and report on their progress to the Conference of the Parties (COP).  However, tobacco control remains a lower health priority for most African governments, and little or no information exists to track progress on tobacco control activities. African individuals and organizations are beginning to coordinate their efforts to influence policymakers to develop and implement targeted tobacco control programs.

 

In the original IDRC work plan the specific objectives for what has become known as the African Tobacco Situational Analyses (ATSA) initiative were to:

While the main goal of understanding the critical determinants of success for tobacco control in Sub-Saharan Africa remains the same, the situational analysis has broadened from teams gathering and understanding existing country data to building case studies on the broader political, social, and economic context in which tobacco control exists in each country and using these to identify policy priorities and engage in, and rigorously document and analyze, policy interventions.

 

To achieve these important objectives twelve African country teams were selected through a competition to: conduct baseline assessments of tobacco use and control in their countries, hold stakeholder meetings in each country to share baseline results and identify country priorities, and hold team meetings to identify one to three priority tobacco control policy interventions in their country, map the context of these priorities, and develop a work plan for the year ahead.  The countries currently receiving support include: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia.

 

In 2009 the teams will work on priority tobacco control policy interventions to achieve change while at the same time documenting and analyzing the process so as to attain a deeper understanding of the determinants of success for country-owned and country-driven tobacco control.  The IDRC team will continue to work closely with country teams to assist them in achieving their objectives and respond to the changing needs.