International records / African Development Bank

Working Paper 149 - Accounting for Poverty in Africa: Illustration with Survey Data from Nigeria

One of the targets for reducing extreme poverty in Africa involves halving the proportion of people living in absolute poverty from 48 percent in 1990 to 24 percent by 2015. Available data so far indicate that it is only the North African countries of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia as well as Mauritius that have already met this target. Available data indicate, for example, that in Sub-Saharan Africa, the $1.25 a day poverty rate has shown no sustained decline over the whole period since 1981, starting and ending at roughly 50 percent at 2008 purchasing power parity (PPP) – the hig…