Africa’s Alarming Poverty

’Africa’s Alarming Poverty’ portrays poverty as a serious economic and social problem that has been afflicting a large proportion of Africa. Poverty in Africa manifests itself in diverse forms such as lack of income and productive assets to ensure sustainable livelihoods, chronic hunger and malnutrition, homelessness, lack of durable goods, widespread terminal diseases, lack of access to clean water, lack of education, low life expectancy, social exclusion and discrimination, high levels of unemployment, high rates of infant and maternal mortality, and lack of ability to influence changes in one’s self-development and/or in society. Poverty has deleterious effects on human well-being, prompting the author to call for immediate action to eradicate the maladies in whatever form they manifest in African countries. The causes of poverty are diverse and complex. Poverty is not God-given but germinates from human failures to work hard and find solutions to it. It is exacerbated by limited ability and sometimes unwillingness to take hard decisions towards removing the malady. Such actions could include (i) government pursuit of economic policies that exclude the poor and are biased against them; (ii) lack of access to markets and meaningful opportunities; (iii) inadequate public support for microeconomic businesses, which demand deserving supportive initiatives such as low-interest credits and skills training; and (iv) lack of infrastructure and use of widespread poor or obsolete technologies in agriculture.