Global shocks are turning millions of vulnerable people into Africa’s new poor and reversing decades of progress, a statement by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) said.

In the statement by ECA’s communication section, its acting executive secretary, Antonio Pedro, explained that the COVID-19 pandemic had pushed an additional 55 million Africans below the poverty line.

He added that the impact of the war in Ukraine was also expected to further compound the challenge.

Mr Pedro noted that even when growth rates were high in Africa, everyone did not benefit equally.

“For example, in 2022, the top 10 per cent of wage earners received about 30.69 per cent of total income,” he said.

Mr Pedro said high inequality and high levels of poverty created a vicious cycle in which structural bottlenecks persisted.

According to him, this renders Africa’s population perennially vulnerable to economic and non-economic shocks.

“The ability of African countries to effectively tackle poverty and inequality is now severely constrained, given declining economic growth, narrowing fiscal space, rising debt, commodity shocks and tightening global financial conditions.

“The risk of missing the poverty and inequality targets set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Agenda 2063: ‘The Africa We Want,’ of the African Union, is higher than it has ever been before,” he said.

Mr Pedro urged that recovery efforts must be pro-poor and inclusive of fostering a new social contract that offers equal opportunity for all.

He said considerable opportunities to reach these goals existed on the continent and beyond.

According to him, they include activities carried out under the African Continental Free Trade Area, green investments, digital transformation and reforms to the global financial architecture.

High growth rates in the past two decades have, however, reduced poverty levels in Africa.

Mr Pedro noted that between 2000 and 2019, the share of the population living in extreme poverty decreased from 53.4 per cent to 40.1 per cent, but the absolute number of poor remains high. Today, 546 million people are still living in poverty in 2022.

The 55th Session of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (CoM2023) will be held from March 15-21, 2023, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The session, a statutory meeting of the ECA, will review the state of economic and social development in Africa and progress on regional integration.

(NAN)