“New statistics show that the rate of child death across sub-Saharan Africa is not just in decline — but that decline has massively accelerated, just in the last few years,” Michael Clemens, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), writes in the center’s “Global Development: Views from the Center” blog, citing a paper released last week by Gabriel Demombynes and Karina Trommlerova in the Kenya office of the World Bank. Clemens provides “figures for some of the recent changes in rates of child death across the continent” and concludes, “This will be startling news for anyone who still thinks sub-Saharan Africa is mired in unending poverty and death” (5/4).