Publication:
Africa's Pulse, No. 29, April 2024: Tackling Inequality to Revitalize Growth and Reduce Poverty in Africa

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Published
2024-04-08
ISSN
Date
2024-03-19
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Economic growth is expected to rebound in Sub-Saharan Africa, supported by increased private consumption and declining inflation in 2024. However, this positive outlook remains fragile due to uncertain global economic conditions, low fiscal buffers, growing debt service obligation, costly external borrowing, and escalating conflict and violence, which continue to weigh on economic activity in the region. Despite the projected boost in growth, the pace of economic expansion in the region remains slow and insufficient to significantly affect poverty reduction. Structural inequality is at the core of these challenges and tackling it can help to restore growth and accelerate poverty reduction. While domestic resource mobilization and support from the international community can help alleviate the region's funding squeeze, investing in human capital, and strengthening local capacity for service delivery can build people's capacity to seize market opportunities. Policies that boost market access by addressing institutional distortions and market imperfections are also critical for fostering inclusive growth.
Link to Data Set
Citation
World Bank. 2024. Africa's Pulse, No. 29, April 2024: Tackling Inequality to Revitalize Growth and Reduce Poverty in Africa. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/41213 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Africa's Pulse, No. 30, October 2024: Transforming Education for Inclusive Growth
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-14) World Bank
    Sub-Saharan Africa's growth recovery has resumed. Economic activity in the region is projected to grow by 3.0 percent in 2024, after bottoming out at 2.4 percent in 2023. Private consumption and investment contributions have supported the growth recovery in 2024. Growth is expected to accelerate further to 4 percent in 2025-26. However, the outlook remains uncertain despite falling global inflation and resilient global activity supporting growth in the region. Sub-Saharan Africa needs to further accelerate growth to reduce extreme poverty and enhance prosperity. GDP per capita is projected to grow by 0.5 percent in 2024 and 1.4 percent in 2025, but this expected increase would still leave the region's living standards below their level in 2014. Macroeconomic stability and human capital investments needed to achieve inclusive growth and transform the education system are vital for the region. Efforts should focus on equipping children with basic skills and providing the youth and workforce with higher-order skills. Increasing investment in education, efficient spending, and collaboration with local partners are needed to achieve universal education by 2030. Addressing these challenges will require a strong policy response to bridge the spending gap and meet education goals.
  • Publication
    Reducing Poverty and Investing in People : The New Role of Safety Nets in Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014) Monchuk, Victoria
    For two decades, Africa’s strong economic growth has paved the way for poverty reduction. Nevertheless, high chronic poverty levels persist, and the gap between income groups in terms of human capital and access to basic services is growing. Also, poor households are vulnerable to frequent shocks. By providing regular, reliable support to poor households and helping them invest in productive activities, targeted interventions such as safety nets help reduce persistent poverty, reverse the trend of increasing inequality, and build household resilience. Until recently, safety nets were implemented only on an ad hoc basis in Africa. However, in the wake of the global economic crisis, policy makers are increasingly viewing safety nets as core instruments for reducing poverty and managing risk. Also a momentum toward rationalizing public spending to provide more adequate and targeted support to the poorest is emerging in response to growing evidence that safety nets can successfully reduce poverty and vulnerability and promote inclusive growth. This book assesses the status and analyzes the objectives, features, systems, performance, and financing of safety nets in 22 African countries. It then identifies how governments and donors can strengthen safety net systems and protect and promote poor and vulnerable people. Overall, the book finds that safety nets are on the rise in Africa and are beginning to evolve from fragmented stand-alone programs into integrated systems. Social protection programming has started to change from largely emergency food aid programs to regular, predictable safety nets including targeted cash transfers and cash-for-work programs. Some countries, including Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania, are working toward consolidating their programs into a national system. Impact evaluations of safety nets in Africa are also increasingly being undertaken and, with recent research into the productive aspects of cash transfer programs, have yielded encouraging evidence that safety nets reduce poverty and vulnerability. The timely analysis of safety nets in Africa provides a solid foundation for evidence-based policy dialogue and programming. As a result of the growing body of evidence that safety nets contribute to inclusive growth, African decision makers are now putting safety nets high on their development agendas.
  • Publication
    Face of Poverty in Madagascar : Poverty, Gender, and Inequality Assessment
    (Washington, DC, 2014-03) World Bank
    Madagascar has been entirely unsuccessful in reducing the number of its people that are poor, or extremely so, in the ten years since 2001, when poverty was already at a very high level. This well-known conclusion draws on the analysis of three successive rounds of the national household expenditure surveys (enquete periodiques aupres des menages, EPM) conducted by the Madagascar National Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) in 2001, 2005, and 2010. The objective of the analysis in this report is to document the levels and changes in poverty in Madagascar, and provide a detailed review of correlates of poverty and inequality in various dimensions, including gender, age, the structure of households, and place of residence. The report is an assessment of past poverty trends, and while policy implications are highlighted in many cases, the report is focused mainly on the descriptive, rather than prescriptive. It is found that the poverty headcount did not decrease between 2001 and 2005, rising instead from 71 to 75 percent of the population, rather than the 68 percent estimated official headcount for 2005. The methodology is described at length in the report and its annexes.
  • Publication
    Cameroon Econoic Update, January 2013, No. 5 : Mitigating Poverty, Vulnerability, and Risk--A Special Focus on Social Safety Nets
    (Washington, DC, 2013-01) World Bank
    The economic updates aim to share knowledge and stimulate debate among those interested in improving the economic management of Cameroon and unleashing its enormous potential. The notes thereby offer another voice on economic issues in Cameroon, and an additional platform for engagement, learning and change. Cameroon's overall poverty rate has not declined and has even increased in the poorest regions. Food security is also problematic in those regions. Yet, Cameroon has a number of small-scale and ad hoc safety net programs which are not appropriately designed to address either chronic or transient poverty. Too few resources are put into these programs for the moment to make a real difference with most of these limited resources allocated to emergency initiatives. Social safety nets build households' productive assets and expand their income-earning opportunities by building their skills and enabling them to engage in higher risk and higher return activities. Going forward, in addition to continued efforts to foster faster economic growth, an efficient, equitable, and financially-sustainable social safety net strategy should be developed that combines different forms of interventions to deal with the specific needs of the poor and the vulnerable, and includes an effective monitoring system to improve the quality programs.
  • Publication
    Africa's Pulse, April 2011 : An Analysis of Issues Shaping Africa's Economic Future
    (Washington, DC, 2011-04) World Bank
    This Africa's pulse newsletter includes the following heading: recent global economic trends and prospects; factors driving the region performance; risk to economic prospects; and rising commodity prices.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Unlocking the Potential of Women Entrepreneurs in Uganda
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08-26) Copley, Amy; Gokalp, Birce; Kirkwood, Daniel
    Private sector development is an integral channel through which countries can better leverage the productive potential of the youth bulge, support job creation, and maintain social stability. Entrepreneurship already plays an important role in Sub-Saharan Africa, where forty-two percent of the nonagricultural labor force is self-employed or is an employer, the highest rate in the world. Women business owners in Uganda face several gender-specific barriers to their enterprise performance, including lower levels of innovation, lower use of capital and labor, and segregation into lower-value sectors. This brief focuses on the policy interventions that can help empower women entrepreneurs across Uganda.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects, June 2023
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-06) World Bank
    Global growth is projected to slow significantly in the second half of this year, with weakness continuing in 2024. Inflation pressures persist, and tight monetary policy is expected to weigh substantially on activity. The possibility of more widespread bank turmoil and tighter monetary policy could result in even weaker global growth. Rising borrowing costs in advanced economies could lead to financial dislocations in the more vulnerable emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). In low-income countries, in particular, fiscal positions are increasingly precarious. Comprehensive policy action is needed at the global and national levels to foster macroeconomic and financial stability. Among many EMDEs, and especially in low-income countries, bolstering fiscal sustainability will require generating higher revenues, making spending more efficient, and improving debt management practices. Continued international cooperation is also necessary to tackle climate change, support populations affected by crises and hunger, and provide debt relief where needed. In the longer term, reversing a projected decline in EMDE potential growth will require reforms to bolster physical and human capital and labor-supply growth.
  • Publication
    Case Studies of Successful Reforms to Address the Challenges of Financing Education Systems Effectively
    (Washington, DC, 2023-11-20) World Bank
    Many low, and middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa face an education financing crisis. Exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, rapid improvements in access place severe pressure on the adequacy of public education expenditure, with average per-student public expenditure in the region being less than one-tenth that in Europe and Central Asia (World Bank, 2022). Some countries have successfully mobilized private sector finance to support education beyond the financing provided by government. These efforts have been particularly common in technical and vocational education and training (TVET), where countries including Tanzania and Zambia have introduced skills levies on businesses, which are channeled into dedicated funds to support TVET. However, such efforts are much rarer in basic education, which typically relies on conventional taxation, public debt, and development assistance for funding. This case study presents the example of Côte d’Ivoire, where a partnership between the government, private foundations, and the cocoa industry has mobilized significant amounts of finance to support the provision of basic education in cocoa-growing communities.
  • Publication
    Digitalizing SMEs to Boost Competitiveness
    (Washington, DC, 2022-10) World Bank
    While Malaysia’s digital economy had already been growing rapidly over the past decade, the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has further accelerated this trend. In particular, increased access to digital platforms has enabled businesses of all sizes to mitigate the crisis’ adverse impacts. At the same time, the depth and breadth of small and medium enterprise (SME) digitalization has remained limited, suggesting a growing risk of digital divide in the country. This report analyzes opportunities and challenges for Malaysian SMEs to better leverage digital tools and platforms to increase their productivity and competitiveness. It is structured around three complementary analytical pillars: (i) a digital business landscape diagnostic presenting the extent of digitalization and use of digital platforms among SMEs in traditional sectors, and the constraints that SMEs still face to digitalize; (ii) an institutional and policy mapping reviewing the government of Malaysia’s efforts to foster SME digitalization; and (iii) a digital market regulations assessment evaluating the adequacy of Malaysia’s digital regulatory environment, to identify shortcomings that may undermine SMEs’ capacity to access and benefit from the use of digital platforms. The analysis has been undertaken with a view to inform the implementation of the Malaysia Digital Blueprint (MyDIGITAL).
  • Publication
    Embedding Digital Finance in e-Commerce Platforms during the COVID-19 Pandemic
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-12) World Bank
    This study provides an early assessment of the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on e-commerce platforms and digital financial services, identifying the opportunities, good practices, and key challenges that have emerged in different regions. The focus of the study is to evaluate the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on the use of e-commerce platforms across different regions and the role that digital financial services have played in the process. The emphasis is on digital and financial inclusion of consumers and small businesses and their impact on job creation and economic growth.