African poverty threatens global development gains

While the number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty has decreased, the opposite has happened in sub-Saharan Africa, a report from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has found.

It says global gains in combatinging poverty might regress unless funders focus their efforts on Africa’s poor nations with the fastest growing populations. The continent is set to host 86 per cent of the world’s extreme poor by 2050, it says.

In their introduction to the 2018 Goalkeeper report, an annual report produced by the foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates warn that “extreme poverty is becoming heavily concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa”.