IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ldr/wpaper/170.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Eliminating Extreme Poverty in Africa: Trends, Policies and the Role of International Organizations

Author

Listed:
  • Zorobabel Bicaba

    (African Development Bank)

  • Zuzana Brixiova

    (IZA and University of Cape Town)

  • Mthuli Ncube

    (University of Oxford)

Abstract

Eradicating extreme poverty for all people everywhere by 2030 is the first goal among the UN Sustainable Development Goals that guide the current development agenda. This paper examines its feasibility for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the world's poorest but growing region. It finds that under plausible assumptions extreme poverty will not be eradicated in SSA by 2030, but it can be reduced to low levels. National and regional policies that focus on accelerating growth, while making it more inclusive would accelerate poverty reduction. International organizations, including informal ones such as the G20, can play a key role in this endeavor by encouraging policy coordination and coherence.

Suggested Citation

  • Zorobabel Bicaba & Zuzana Brixiova & Mthuli Ncube, 2016. "Eliminating Extreme Poverty in Africa: Trends, Policies and the Role of International Organizations," SALDRU Working Papers 170, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
  • Handle: RePEc:ldr:wpaper:170
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://opensaldru.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11090/819/2016_170_Saldruwp.pdf?sequence=1
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sabina Alkire, Maria Emma Santos, 2010. "Acute Multidimensional Poverty: A New Index for Developing Countries," OPHI Working Papers 38, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    2. Olinto, Pedro & Beegle, Kathleen & Sobrado, Carlos & Uematsu, Hiroki, 2013. "The State of the Poor: Where Are The Poor, Where Is Extreme Poverty Harder to End, and What Is the Current Profile of the World’s Poor?," World Bank - Economic Premise, The World Bank, issue 125, pages 1-8, October.
    3. Angus Deaton, 2005. "Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 1-19, February.
    4. Nancy Birdsall, Christian Meyer, Alexis Sowa, 2013. "Global Markets, Global Citizens, and Global Governance in the 21st Century," Working Papers 329, Center for Global Development.
    5. Commission on Growth and Development, 2008. "The Growth Report : Strategies for Sustained Growth and Inclusive Development," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6507, December.
    6. Martin Ravallion, 2013. "How Long Will It Take to Lift One Billion People Out of Poverty?," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 139-158, August.
    7. Yoshida, Nobuo & Uematsu, Hiroki & Sobrado, Carlos E., 2014. "Is extreme poverty going to end ? an analytical framework to evaluate progress in ending extreme poverty," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6740, The World Bank.
    8. James Heintz & Léonce Ndikumana, 2011. "Is There a Case for Formal Inflation Targeting in Sub-Saharan Africa?-super- 1," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 20(suppl_2), pages -103, May.
    9. Martin Ravallion, 2003. "Measuring Aggregate Welfare in Developing Countries: How Well Do National Accounts and Surveys Agree?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(3), pages 645-652, August.
    10. Dollar, David & Kleineberg, Tatjana & Kraay, Aart, 2016. "Growth still is good for the poor," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 68-85.
    11. International Monetary Fund, 2007. "Democratic Republic of the Congo: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper," IMF Staff Country Reports 2007/330, International Monetary Fund.
    12. Jens Matthias Arnold & João Jalles, 2014. "Dividing the Pie in Brazil: Income Distribution, Social Policies and the New Middle Class," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1105, OECD Publishing.
    13. Edward, Peter & Sumner, Andy, 2014. "Estimating the Scale and Geography of Global Poverty Now and in the Future: How Much Difference Do Method and Assumptions Make?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 67-82.
    14. John Anyanwu, 2012. "Working Paper 149 - Accounting for Poverty in Africa: Illustration with Survey Data from Nigeria," Working Paper Series 383, African Development Bank.
    15. Homi Kharas, 2010. "The Emerging Middle Class in Developing Countries," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 285, OECD Publishing.
    16. Basu, Kaushik, 2013. "Shared prosperity and the mitigation of poverty : in practice and in precept," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6700, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zorobabel Bicaba & Zuzana Brixiova & Mthuli Ncube, 2015. "Working Paper 223 - Eliminating Extreme Poverty in Africa: Trends, Policies and the Role of International Organizations," Working Paper Series 2163, African Development Bank.
    2. Mthuli Ncube & Zuzana Brixiova & Zorobabel Bicaba, 2014. "Can Dreams Come True? Eliminating Extreme Poverty In Africa By 2030," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series wp1076, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    3. Zorobabel Bicabaa & Zuzana Brixiová & Mthuli Ncube, 2017. "Can Extreme Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa be Eliminated by 2030?," Journal of African Development, African Finance and Economic Association (AFEA), vol. 19(2), pages 93-110.
    4. Christoph Lakner & Daniel Gerszon Mahler & Mario Negre & Espen Beer Prydz, 2022. "How much does reducing inequality matter for global poverty?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(3), pages 559-585, September.
    5. Peter Edward & Andy Sumner, 2013. "The Future of Global Poverty in a Multi-Speed World: New Estimates of Scale, Location and Cost," Working Papers 111, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    6. Edward, Peter & Sumner, Andy, 2014. "Estimating the Scale and Geography of Global Poverty Now and in the Future: How Much Difference Do Method and Assumptions Make?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 67-82.
    7. AfDB AfDB, . "African Development Report 2015 - Growth, Poverty and Inequality Nexus: Overcoming Barriers to Sustainable Development," African Development Report, African Development Bank, number 2342.
    8. Pinelopi K. Goldberg & Tristan Reed, 2020. "Demand-Side Constraints in Development: The Role of Market Size, Trade, and (In)Equality," NBER Working Papers 27286, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Goldberg,Pinelopi Koujianou & Reed,Tristan, 2020. "Income Distribution, International Integration and Sustained Poverty Reduction," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9342, The World Bank.
    10. Kouadio, Hugues Kouassi & Gakpa, Lewis-Landry, 2022. "Do economic growth and institutional quality reduce poverty and inequality in West Africa?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 41-63.
    11. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Serajuddin, Umar, 2020. "Tracking the sustainable development goals: Emerging measurement challenges and further reflections," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    12. Tomas Hellebrandt & Paolo Mauro, 2015. "The Future of Worldwide Income Distribution," Working Paper Series WP15-7, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    13. Gaurav Datt & Martin Ravallion & Rinku Murgai, 2020. "Poverty and Growth in India over Six Decades," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(1), pages 4-27, January.
    14. Azzarri, Carlo & Signorelli, Sara, 2020. "Climate and poverty in Africa South of the Sahara," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    15. Peter Edward & Andy Sumner, 2015. "New estimates of global poverty and inequality: How much difference do price data," Working Papers 365, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    16. Bluhm, Richard & de Crombrugghe, Denis & Szirmai, Adam, 2018. "Poverty accounting," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 237-255.
    17. Anna Orthofer, 2017. "Concepts and Measures of Saving: Selected Issues for South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 85(2), pages 222-241, June.
    18. Peter Edward & Andy Sumner, 2014. "The Poor, the Prosperous and the ‘Inbetweeners’: A Fresh Perspective on Global Society, Inequality and Growth," Working Papers 122, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    19. Simplice Asongu & Ndemaze Asongu, 2018. "The comparative exploration of mobile money services in inclusive development," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 45(1), pages 124-139, January.
    20. Simplice Asongu & Jacinta Nwachukwu, 2016. "Welfare Spending and Quality of Growth in Developing Countries: A Note on Evidence from Hopefuls, Contenders and Best Performers," Working Papers of the African Governance and Development Institute. 16/028, African Governance and Development Institute..

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Poverty; sustainable development; inclusive growth; policies; governance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O20 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ldr:wpaper:170. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alison Siljeur (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sauctza.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.