Africa suffered its worst recession in more than 50 years in 2020 due to the COVID–19 pandemic. The disruptions pushed a significant population of Africans into extreme poverty in 2020 and reversed more than two decades of progress in poverty reduction on the continent.

Around 460 million people on the continent lived below the extreme poverty line of 1.90 U.S. dollars a day in 2022. Since the continent had approximately 1.4 billion inhabitants, roughly a third of Africa’s population was in extreme poverty that year. Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan had Africa’s highest extreme poverty rates. Over 75 per cent of their population lived with less than 1.90 U.S. dollars per day in 2019.

Poverty in Africa is linked to multiple factors including critical situations of employment, education, health, nutrition, war, and conflict. Though Africa has made remarkable progress on a range of social and economic metrics in recent years, the global outlook throughout 2022 amid high inflation, aggressive monetary tightening, and uncertainties from both the war in Ukraine and the lingering pandemic remained a cog in the wheel of progress. Soaring food and energy prices are eroding real incomes, triggering a global cost-of-living crisis, particularly for the most vulnerable groups. Growth in the world’s three largest economies the United States, China, and the European Union—is weakening, with significant spill overs to other countries. In a related manner, the rising government borrowing costs and large capital outflows are exacerbating fiscal and balance of payments pressures in many developing countries. The increase in foreign debt in Africa has raised concern that another crisis is looming.