Abstract:
Employing World Bank data, this paper, first, historically examines Africa’s record on poverty incidence,
spread and severity, as compared with other regions of the world, at the US$1.90 and US$3.20 per day
(2011 PPP) poverty standards. Second, it evaluates country-specific progress on growth, poverty and
inequality, and compares the ‘poverty transformation efficiency vector’ (PTEV) among African countries.
Third, the study analyses the relative roles of income growth and inequality changes in explaining
African countries’ poverty records, through a decomposition of poverty changes using ‘optimal’ income
and inequality elasticity estimates from the ‘identity’ model. The study finds that following the dismal
record on poverty during the 1980s, progress on poverty has been appreciable since Africa’s growth
resurgence starting in the mid-1990s, and that this progress was driven mainly by income growth,
consistent with the global evidence. Nonetheless, inequality often played a complementary role in
most of the countries and, in a small number of cases, it was the primary driver of changes in poverty.
Thus, the present study sheds light on country-specific differences in the relative roles of growth and
inequality in poverty reduction on the continent, based on both qualitative and quantitative evidence.
The study should, therefore, provide a useful compass to those who seek to understand country specific situations within the African context.
