Issues in Brief, No. 10, October 2009

A Call for Resilience Index for Health and Social Systems in Africa
By Astier M. Almedom

October 2009 (8 pages)
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This policy brief explores the concept of resilience as it applies to health and social systems in Africa, and suggests that development of a multi-dimensional resilience index may help to understand and formulate policy in settings of complex emergencies. The paper concludes, “Thus, a resilience index could possibly inform how we respond to complex catastrophes in Africa and elsewhere.”

This paper is part of the Africa 2060 Project, a Pardee Center program of research, publications and symposia exploring African futures in various aspects related to development on continental and regional scales. The views expressed in this paper are strictly those of the author and should not be assumed to represent the views of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future or of Boston University.

Astier Almedom, D.Phil., a native of Africa, is an Oxford-trained applied anthropologist with more than 25 years of experience in academic research and interdisciplinary scholarship in human behavioral and environmental sciences, including field work in eastern Africa, Afghanistan, and India. She is currently Director of the International Resilience Program at the Institute for Global Leadership, Tufts University.