Beitrag vom 20.10.2013

Afrobarometer

http://www.afrobarometer.org/

After a Decade of Growth in Africa, Little Change in Poverty at the Grassroots

By Boniface Dulani, Robert Mattes and Carolyn Logan

October 2013

Key Findings

•With only two years to go before the 2015 Millennium Development Goal benchmark
year, roughly one in five Africans still experiences frequent (‘many times' or ‘always')
deprivation with respect to their most basic needs for food (17%), clean water (21%), and
medicines and medical care (20%). Approximately half experience at least occasional
shortages. Slightly fewer suffer from inadequate access to cooking fuel (13% frequently
go without).

•More than twice as many (44%) regularly lack a cash income which might enable them to
meet these basic needs, and a full three-quarters (76%) report going without cash at least
once in the previous year.

•People in Burundi, Guinea, Niger, Senegal and Togo experienced the highest average
levels of lived poverty, while those living in Algeria and Mauritius experienced the lowest.

•People living in countries undergoing or emerging from conflicts appear to be particularly
vulnerable to lived poverty, especially food shortages. Five of the seven countries that
experience the highest levels of nutritional deprivation - Burundi, Liberia, Madagascar,
Sierra Leone and Niger - are all emerging from recent conflicts. And the two worst
performers in North Africa - Egypt and Sudan - have recently faced internal conflicts as
well.

•Comparing regional experiences of lived poverty, we find that both West and East
Africans encounter the most shortages, while North Africans experience the lowest levels
of deprivation.

•Across 16 countries where data is available over the past decade, the average experience
of lived poverty has hardly changed. There have been real over-time decreases in Cape
Verde, Ghana, Malawi and Zambia. And the formation of the Government of National
Unity in Zimbabwe in 2008 also appears to have generated a "peace dividend” in the past
five years that translated into a more recent, but substantial reduction of lived poverty in
that country. However, these instances of poverty reduction have been matched by
increases in Botswana, Mali, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania over the past decade.

•The data show significant correlations between access to electrical grids, piped water,
and other basic services in communities and lower levels of lived poverty. Higher levels
of formal education also correlate with sharply lower experiences of deprivation.

http://www.afrobarometer.org/