Half of Africans are poor and 70% live in rural areas. This makes poverty in Africa largely a rural phenomena. As a matter of fact, a duality exists, where you have an impoverished rural community on one hand, and a richer or better off urban society on the other. Consequently, development in most African countries is inherently urban biased. So we have the developed vs underdeveloped scenario replicated in each African state (Minus the aid industry to help the underdeveloped rural).
Month: June 2017
The light of African elites should overwhelm darkness
If at all education is light, and if just one bulb lights up a room, then why cant the hundreds of thousands, or millions of educated Africans be enough to enlighten Africa? Is it to do with the intensity of their light, or is it switched off?
I am asking this because every year over 400,000 Africans graduate from universities within Africa alone. If just half of these could engage in efficient economic activities connected with rural villages, poverty would have been reduced by now. But surprisingly, while world poverty has fallen rapidly over the past 40 years (especially in Asia), it has doubled in sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank, 2004). Thus the continent with about 1.111 billion people (2013), has about 48.5% live on $1.25/day; and with about 414 million people (41.4%) live in extreme poverty. This means almost half of the population is actually poor.
Afrika Digest 