Sub-Saharan lags behind about poverty eradication

Due to economic growth, the proportion of Tanzania's population living below the poverty line dropped to 33.3 per cent last year from 35.7 per cent in 2000/01, stated the 2007 survey, which was released by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics.

However, the number of people in Tanzania who have to survive on $1.10 a day or less has risen by one million to 12.7 million in the last six years.

Researchers have attributed this mainly to an annual population growth of 2.6 per cent.

It is true that the country’s economic growth is moving in the right direction, yet poverty reduction is still marginal.
Tanzania is one of Africa’s biggest recipients of development aid with almost 40 per cent of the current 2008/09 budget funded by outside donors.

Foreign aid agencies are willing to invest into the country because of its political stability, attempts to crack down on corruption and sound fiscal reforms.

Economic growth in Tanzania, the third-biggest gold producer in Africa, reached about seven per cent a year since 2001. Yet, the country remains one of the poorest in the world.

Few Tanzanians are able to access basic services. Only 58 per cent of residents of Tanzania’s biggest city Dar es Salaam, for example, were able to afford piped drinking water in 2007; down from 86 per cent six years earlier.

Developing economic policies that benefit the poor are key, with special attention placed on income-generating activities in rural areas.

In 1990 just over five out of every ten people (56.5 per cent) in the continent were living in poverty. Twenty years later that proportion was estimated at about 48.4per cent. This translates to a 14 per cent reduction, but to achieve the target the reduction should have been at least 28.3 per cent -- half the 1990 levels. Moreover, poverty levels increased in five of the 30 African countries assessed.

Steady economic growth in the sub-Saharan region and specific poverty reduction strategies are credited for most of the progress across the continent.

Ethiopia appears to be a good example of when concerted and deliberate policies supported by economic growth can have an impact on poverty levels.

While sub-Saharan Africa's economic expansion has been remarkable over the last two decades and has contributed to alleviating poverty, growth levels were not enough to engineer structural economic transformation.

Although unemployment remained stable at around 7.5 per cent in 2012, this number, according to the International Labour Organization, gave no indication of the great proportion of workers (77 per cent) in vulnerable employment, or the large share of those involved in subsistence agriculture.

Population growth, unstable commodity prices, natural disasters, including droughts leading to failed crops and persistent conflicts causing massive displacement are some of the main causes of the underperformance in Sub-Saharan Africa.