How bad is poverty in Africa? The situation is improving, but Africa remains the poorest continent on planet Earth. Below are some of the effects of poverty in Africa.
Leading Facts About Poverty in Africa
1. Seventy-five percent of the world’s poorest countries are located in Africa, including Zimbabwe , Liberia and Ethiopia . The Central African Republic ranked the poorest in the world with a GDP per capita of $656 in 2016.
2. According to Word poverty clock, Sub Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of residents living in extreme poverty. With Nigeria having the highest in the world. Extreme poverty is defined as living on $1.25 or less a day. In 2010, 414 million people were living in extreme poverty across sub-Saharan Africa.
3. Approximately one in three people living in sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished. Global estimates of undernourishment rose from 777 million in 2015 to 821 million in 2017. Africa has the highest prevalence of undernourishment, estimated in 2016 to be 20% of the population. This is especially alarming in Eastern Africa, where it is suspected that one-third of the population is undernourished. the U.N. Millennium Project reported that over 40 percent of all Africans are unable to regularly obtain sufficient food.
4. In sub-Saharan Africa, 589 million people live without electricity. As a result, a staggering 80 percent of the population relies on biomass products such as wood, charcoal and dung in order to cook their meals.
5. Of the 738 million people globally who lack access to clean water, 37 percent are living in sub-Saharan Africa. Poverty in Africa results in more than 500 million people suffering from waterborne diseases. According to the U.N. Millennium Project, more than 50 percent of Africans have a water-related illness like cholera.
6. The United Nations estimates that Sub-Saharan Africa alone loses 40 billion hours per year collecting water; that’s the same as a whole year’s worth of labor by France’s entire workforce.
7. Due to continuing violence, conflict and widespread human rights abuses , the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that more than 18 million people are of concern to the agency, including stateless people and returnees.
The number has soared in recent years, partly due to ongoing crises in the Central African Republic (CAR) , Nigeria and South Sudan.
8. Fewer than 20 percent of African women have access to education. Uneducated African women are twice as likely to contract AIDS and 50 percent less likely to immunize their children. Meanwhile, the children of African women with at least five years of schooling have a 40 percent higher chance of survival.
9. Women in sub-Saharan Africa are more than 230 times more likely to die during childbirth or pregnancy than women in North America. Approximately one in 16 women living in sub-Saharan African will die during childbirth or pregnancy; only one in 4,000 women in North America will.
10. More than one million people, mostly children under the age of five, die every year from malaria. Malaria deaths in Africa alone account for 90 percent of all malaria deaths worldwide. Eighty percent of these victims are African children. The U.N. Millennium Project has calculated that a child in Africa dies from malaria every 30 seconds, or about 3,000 each day.
Sources: Unhcr.org worldhunger.org waterproject.org
