A recent World Bank report revealed that Africa could play host to 87 percent of the world’s extremely poor population by 2030, an increase from the current 60 percent, if no significant reforms were made.
The report stated that unequal access to jobs, finance, and important services like education and healthcare has made inequality worse, slowing down efforts to reduce poverty in the region.
The report, called ‘Leveling the Playing Field: Addressing Structural Inequalities to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in Africa,’ released on Wednesday, explains that inequalities based on where people are born, their ethnicity, gender, and family background, along with problems in markets and institutions, give some people advantages while others suffer.
The report also states that this has made Africa the second most unequal region in the world, after Latin America, and the only continent where reducing extreme poverty has stopped in recent years.
The report pointed out that even though poverty has decreased quickly around the world and is now in single digits, Africa’s extreme poverty rate (which means people living on less than $2.15 a day) was 38 percent in 2022, the highest of any region.
“Currently, 60% of the world’s extremely poor people live in this region, and without big changes, that number could go up to 87% by 2030.
“The report suggests that poverty reduction strategies should focus on broadening opportunities.”
The report pointed out that starting in the early 2000s, Ethiopia increased land use rights, which encouraged investment in agriculture. In Kenya, financial products that work well with the market, such as mobile money, improved financial access and helped families better handle unexpected challenges.
In Ghana, the World Bank’s report explained that investing in primary education led to more students finishing school. Also, partly opening up the cocoa market and investing in research and disease control helped the cocoa industry.
