Nigeria not doing enough to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger –AfDB

More than 30 per cent of countries in Africa, including Nigeria, are lagging behind in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger in the last five years.

This is as a result of lack of formulating or implementing enough sustainable economic growth policies.

But Africa still leads as the world’s second fastest growing region in poverty reduction, from 35 per cent to 45 per cent in the same period under review.

These are contained in the figures obtained from the published data and report of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Research unit, on Thursday.

The report said, “The Continent may have strived to reduce poverty, though not growing in the same pace as to achieve eradicating extreme poverty and hunger in most of the countries, when compared with the situation in other developing nations in Asia.

“Poverty has declined faster since after 2005 than it did over 1990–2005—but not fast enough to reach a noticeable level by 2016.

“Most workers are employed in vulnerable jobs with low wages and low productivity,” the bank says.

The information unit identifies some misguided policies in most African economies as having contributed in achieving only a relative improvement in poverty reduction, but not much in promoting the needed economic growth that could lead to total poverty and hunger eradication.

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However, the continent’s growth, if well articulated would have been accelerating its capability in providing it with a unique opportunity to create jobs through proactive policy interventions.

It recommends that accepting faster to calls for a structural transformation of African economies, with bold industrial policies, could promote more value-added and economic diversifications.

The AfDB identifies Nigeria as one of the countries that have fallen from their poverty eradication position in the last two years.

It also named the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mauritania among the tested 19 countrues in the same category with Nigeria merely reducing hunger between 20.0 per cent to 40.9 per cent.

Other countries that fell into better category of reducing hunger by between 10.0 per cent to 19.9 per cent are: Burundi, Swaziland, Comoros, Cote d’Ivoire and Botswana.

“To improve on this,” it states, “countries in Africa must concentrate efforts in rural areas and low-income groups, because urban–rural income disparities are holding back progress.”

On Africa’s contribution to environmental sustainability, AfDB says the continent is also below par, as most of the countries are leaving their borders porous for all wastes to come in from the developed economies in the name of trade liberalisation.

“Some of the countries are doing fairly well in limiting Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions and ozone-depleting substances, yet doing little to reduce forests shrinking. This is in addition to most countries struggling to meet targets on water and sanitation, the report further stated.

 

 

 

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