Ending extreme poverty and increasing prosperity dominated talks at the annual World Bank/International Monetary Fund meetings that ended in Lima, Peru, on Oct. 11. According to the organisers, the events had in attendance government ministers, development experts, chief executive officers of companies, and celebrities. Nigeria’s delegation included the Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele and the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Anastasia Daniel-Nwaobia.
Thanks to sustained efforts by those involved, the world has made tremendous progress in the fight against poverty in the past two decades. The number of extremely poor people still living without running water, toilets, electricity, and enough food to eat, is projected to drop below 10 percent of the world’s population this year. This will translate to about 700 million people, down from about 900 million in 2012.
According to the Bank, Africa posted the slowest rate of poverty reduction of all major developing regions during the period. The share of people living in extreme poverty, or on less than US$1.90 a day, declined slightly, from 56 percent in 1990 to 43 percent in 2012. But since that year, extreme poverty has fallen to a projected 35 percent in 2015 in the Africa region, using the Bank’s poverty line of $1.90 a day. The estimates released earlier this month showed that the percentage of people living in extreme poverty will likely fall to under 10 percent for the first time this year. This is cheering news for the Bank and its 188 member countries which have resolved to effectively end extreme poverty by 2030. This intent is elucidated in the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations in New York in September.
In the case of Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation, World Bank data reveals that the number of poor people vis-à-vis the country’s population rose between 2009 and 2013 from 46 percent to 48.4 percent. That’s about half of the total population, or some 88 million people.
Meanwhile, development experts are worried that finding the cash to redress the condition amidst Africa’s numerous contending needs is proving to be hard. Ironically, while Africa is the least to blame for global warming, the provision of funds to combat the phenomenon has been unfairly skewed against it.
But erasing the ugliest form of poverty over the next 15 years in line with the new SDGs will not happen easily giving the current period of slow global economic growth, low commodity prices, imminent interest rate hikes, and continued flight of capital out of emerging markets, said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. These developments plus the impact of climate change and crises in fragile states will make the job even more daunting. This prompted Kim to warn: “While we remain confident of ending extreme poverty, the final stretch will be extremely difficult.”
Unfortunately, in no other continent will the impact be more greatly felt than Africa, according to the President of the African Development Bank Akinwumi Adesina. He told the audience in Lima that climate change and rising global temperatures were putting the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of Africans at risk. For example, he said rising temperatures were putting smallholder farmers in the Sahel at risk from frequent droughts that damage crops and livestock. Fishermen suffer when sea levels rise, he added.
It’s the reason why Lake Chad, shared by Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, has shrunk from around 25,000 square kilometers 50 years ago to its present size of 1,350 sq. km. The result is that some 30 million inhabitants have lost their sources of livelihood, and the inevitable turning of the area into a fertile ground for insurgency which is currently threatening the West African sub-region. Climate change is also why thousands of communities across Nigeria are prone to flooding yearly, displacing millions of people and destroying crops and farmlands. Meanwhile, development experts are worried that finding the cash to redress the condition amidst Africa’s numerous contending needs is proving to be hard. Ironically, while Africa is the least to blame for global warming, the provision of funds to combat the phenomenon has been unfairly skewed against it.
“The reality is that while Africa contributes less than two percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions, its populations suffer disproportionately from negative impacts of climate change,” said Adesina. “The current global climate financing architecture is not providing the finance Africa needs. Africa is shortchanged by climate change, and Africa is shortchanged by the lack of sufficient climate financing. This must change,” he said. On its part, the AfDB announced that it would triple its funding of projects designed to improve the situation to $5 billion annually by 2020. This figure is paltry. So it’s only fair that industrialised countries that are mainly to blame for global warming should pay for cleaning up the mess they created. Otherwise, should temperatures be allowed to rise by up to two degrees Celsius, it may prove catastrophic for future generations of Africans in their bid to escape the poverty curse, the World Bank boss said.
African countries must also devise means of prudently managing their finances, efficiently generating more revenues through improved tax collection, blocking illicit funds transfer, and most crucially, decisively stamping out corruption.
But merely throwing money at the problem may not lower global temperatures. For Africa, neglecting the capacity dimensions of the SDGs will make it difficult to achieve the objective, according to the African Capacity Building Foundation. The Harare-based Foundation, which helps to grow local African skills needed to achieve its developmental goals, was also present at the forum to give its own perspective. “Through grants, technical assistance, and knowledge generation, ACBF is playing a critical role of ensuring that the continent has the capacity to achieve its goals,” the Executive Secretary, Emmanuel Nnadozie, told the gathering. African governments and their development partners should heed his counsel because “capacity building in all its forms and dimensions has often been the mother of all missing links in Africa’s development efforts.” This trend must stop. There’s a lot the ACBF can do to ensure that the continent doesn’t repeat past errors which have set Africans far behind other regions.
African countries must also devise means of prudently managing their finances, efficiently generating more revenues through improved tax collection, blocking illicit funds transfer, and most crucially, decisively stamping out corruption. These measures will ensure there is sufficient resources to deal poverty and underdevelopment a deadly blow on the continent.
Paul Okolo is an Abuja-based writer on development matters.
