Many countries in Africa are still wallowing in poverty. The face of poverty is complex and changes over time; yet, the most common aspect is the lack of access to basic human needs.
Most common causes of poverty are mismanagement of money, corruption, and conflict. The change in environment and climate is also a contributing factor to increasing levels of poverty.
Following World Bank report in 2016, poverty levels across the continent reduced between 1990 and 2012. Yet, the number of poor people on the continent has been rising, mainly because of increased population.
World Poverty Data has ranked the countries according to the number of poor people, and a country in Africa is leading.
Nigeria
Taking over from India, Nigeria leads the world with the highest number of people living in poverty. Following the World Poverty Data, Nigeria has about 87 million people living in poverty, representing 44% of the country’s population of 195 million. A surprising fact because it is a country with vast oil riches. It is predicted that the situation is set to be worse considering the country is experiencing a population boom.
The number of people trying to escape poverty is at a rate of -5.8%, meaning more people are falling into poverty than escaping it.
The Democratic Republic of Congo
In DRC, about 60 million people live in poverty. The country with a population of 84.7 million people has been under political conflict and strife, which contributed to the increased levels of poverty. The situation has been made worse with the lack of political structure and sustainability. Just like Nigeria, the poverty escape rate is -3 %.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia in 3rd place have 24 million people living in poverty. The only difference between Ethiopia and Nigeria and the DRC is that it’s well on track to eliminate poverty per the Sustainable Development Goals. It has already managed to go beyond the targeted poverty escape rate of 3.6% with a current rate of 4.7%.
Tanzania
Located in East Africa, have about 20million people out of 58.6 million people living in poverty. It is also one of the regional countries that have gone off track towards eliminating poverty by 2030, together with Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.
Mozambique
In Mozambique, 17.8 million people, 58.9% of the population, live in poverty. According to the report, the rising levels of poverty can be attributed to the slow drive to reduce it; dependence on agriculture that still uses poor production methods; as well as the aftermath of civil war.