Thursday, March 28, 2024

African Countries Are Behind On Progress Towards Poverty Reduction Goals

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By Zuhumnan Dapel

In their annual meeting at the United Nations in 2005, world leaders agreed on a common economic agenda. This was to halve – between 1990 and 2015 – the proportion of the world’s population living on less than one dollar a day. It’s been nearly 15 years since this resolution.

The world has certainly seen economic progress but it is not even. And countries in Africa lag behind the global average.

Global wealth has more than doubled from US$170 trillion in 2000 to $360 trillion in 2019. Global wealth per adult is at a record high of $70,850.

Mean wealth per adult in Africa is $6,488. In Mozambique, it is as low as $352.

The proportion of the world’s people living on less than two dollars a day (an updated measure of extreme poverty) has more than halved from 35.9% in 1990 to 10% in 2015. But in sub-Saharan Africa the figure still stands at 41%, according to the World Bank. The bank estimates that 87% of the world’s poorest people will live in the region by 2030 if the trends continue.

Life expectancy has been growing by 16 weeks a year so that those born today are likely to live 20 years longer than a child born in 1960. In Africa, average life expectancy remained at a level that the rest of the world passed in 1974 and is rising at a snail’s pace.

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