Presentation
Africa is the second largest and most populous continent in the world.
It has a surface area of about 30,221,532 Km2 and a population of about 900 million people. It is estimated that there are about 9 million people who stutter in Africa following the universally accepted rate of 1% of stutterers in a given population.
The situation of people who stutter in Africa is very hard due to the fact that there are few trained specialists to work with people who stutter. Where these few specialists exist, they are only in big towns and cities. In the absence of these professionals people who stutter are forced to resort to the available traditional and at times very crude methods of treating stuttering.
Since the beginning of the year 2000 and due to the availability of internet services in Africa, some people who stutter have been able to link themselves with many stuttering Associations and persons who stutter in some parts of the world. They have been able to follow the example of their colleagues of the other parts of the world and have developed self help movements for people who stutter in their countries. As of now there are stuttering associations in some African countries which Associations are members of the International stuttering Association, ISA. These countries are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DR Congo, Mauritania, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda.
The first ever African conference on stuttering in Africa was organized in Douala Cameroon in October 2005 and the second is planned for Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso in October 2008.
