Africa and the threat of poverty

Poverty, according to the investopedia dictionary, is a state or condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and essentials to enjoy a minimum standard of life and well-being that is considered acceptable in society. Poverty status is usually assigned to people or society that lacks the capacity to meet basic needs. Global investors are often mindful of poverty indexes in countries across the world as high poverty level in a particular country could constitute stumbling blocks to returns on investment.

It is in view of the harsh reality of the havoc that poverty, if allowed to flourish, could unleash on the world that poverty eradication remains one of the essential aspects of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Indeed, the United Nations and all its vital organs have put in place various platforms with the intent of providing a global strategy that could be appropriately harnessed to effectively deal with the threat of global poverty.

Presently, from all available indexes, there are apparent signs of extreme poverty across the world. A recent World Bank report affirms that “it is shocking to have a poverty line as low as $1.25 per day, it is even more shocking that 1/7th of the world’s population lives below this line. The levels of inequality and poverty that prevail in the world today are totally unacceptable”. Conflicts and crisis being experienced at various parts of the world are partly a reflection of the extreme global poverty status. The pathetic global poverty situation, therefore, calls for urgent actions by all stakeholders.

In 2013, the World Bank, in view of the frightening world poverty condition, set two major goals as a springboard through which poverty could be confronted. The first is to basically stop acute poverty, by reducing the share of people living on less than $1.25 a day to less than 3 percent of the global population by 2030. The other is to encourage shared prosperity by improving the living standards of the bottom 40 percent of the population in every country.

In-spite of genuine efforts from World Bank, governments and other development partners, the task of poverty eradication remains a daunting one. The pace of poverty reduction across the world has been largely slow and grossly insignificant. In numerous societies, the poverty level remains unimaginably towering, particularly in developing countries. Nigeria, according to a 2013 data released by the World Bank is one of the top five countries with the leading amount of poor.

Nigeria ranked third in the world while India ranked number one with 33 per cent of the world poor. China is ranked second with 13 per cent of the world’s poor, followed by Nigeria where seven per cent of the world poor live in. Bangladesh has six per cent share of the world’s poor while the Democratic Republic of Congo has five per cent of the world’s poor population. In the World Bank’s estimation, these five countries are home to 760 million of the world’s poor while countries such as Indonesia, Pakistan, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya would encompass almost 80 per cent of the extreme poor.

In Africa, the practicality of poverty is quite frightening as most Africans live on less than a dollar income per day. Perhaps more niggling is that, with 34 out of a total of 49, African countries account for a greater proportion of the Least Developed Countries, LDCs, in the world. This, perhaps, explains why poverty indicators such as extreme hunger, malnourishment, homelessness, diseases, high crime rate, slums, lack of opportunities, low productivity and illiteracy abound in larger quantity in the continent.

The African poverty situation is further compounded by failure of governments across the continent to properly harness human, natural and material resources for the common good of all. This is why Nigeria, a famous world oil exporter, is ranked among the poorest nations of the world.

As things presently stand, the threat of poverty in the African continent might continue unabated. This is as a result of what one would want to term government failure. Across the continent, government failure is quite apparent in numerous ways. For instance, it is a common knowledge that strong education, health and infrastructure structures are required in tackling poverty.  The question, of course, is: why has there not been more investment in education, health and infrastructure across the African continent?

 

The answer is not simply a lack of funding.  The problem is that much of the money spent on these sectors is captured by powerful elites before it actually reaches the poor.  In Chad, for instance, it has been revealed that only one percent of the nonwage public spending on health actually reaches the clinics. This is often almost the case in most African nations in almost every sector. Therefore, while most African governments tend to budget more (on paper that is) on education, health and infrastructure, among others, it is only a very tiny fraction of such budgetary allocations that have meaningful impact on the people. Hence, order to actually get spending on these sectors to benefit the poor, government failure must be overcome.

African governments need to shift focus on the education structure in order to fashion a new order that could facilitate wealth creation. The present education arrangement, in most African countries, would only help in further deepening poverty since its emphasis is more on education of the ‘head’. Though this in itself is good, but there is need to further emphasise on technical education with the central aim of providing head, heart, mind and hand education. It is only this kind of education that could partly take Africa out of the doldrums of poverty.

Similarly, African countries need to look inward to develop their natural resources. Anti-colonial elements often criticize European nations for being responsible for the underdevelopment of the continent. Their grouse being that the natural resources of African nations were fully exploited by colonial masters to build their respective countries.

But then, now that African nations have fully obtained political independence, what have they done with same resources? Why has poverty remained part and parcel of the continent in-spite of all her natural endowments? It might be difficult for Africa to get off the hook of poverty until its governments begin to pay particular attention to education, agriculture and industrialization, all anchored on a tax based economy.

Though the task seems herculean, but all poor countries could draw valuable lessons from Vietnam’s experience. From a poverty rate of 58.1 percent in 1993, the country very successfully reduced poverty to an estimated rate of 14.5 percent in 2008. Progress in reducing malnutrition has also been significant, falling from 41 percent to 11.7 percent in 2011. As previously stated, this could only happen when we are able to overcome government failure in the continent. No matter the strategies being put in place to tackle poverty in the continent, we might not get the desired results until we get the political landscape right.

Tayo Ogunbiyi