Nigeria is among the wealthiest nations in Africa, yet its people are the poorest in the world: we try to understand the reasons behind this contradiction.
La Nigeria has become the country with the highest number of people living in extreme poverty, defined as surviving on less than $1.90 a day (€1.60).
The record previously belonged to India, but in May the situation changed: while the Asian country had 73 million people living in absolute poverty, Nigeria had 87 million — a figure that continues to grow at a rate of six people per minute. These are estimates from the World poverty clock, produced for the Brookings institution.
Now confirmation has come from the World Bank, which has released preliminary data from its 2018 poverty report, to be published in full on 17 October, on the occasion of the World Day for Overcoming Poverty. "Short-term forecasts suggest that Nigeria may have already overtaken India in the ranking of countries with the highest number of people living in poverty," the document reads.
The news is all the more striking when one considers that Nigeria and South Africa are the wealthiest countries on the continent. The explanation lies in the fact that Nigeria's population is growing faster than its economy, so much so that "by the middle of the century the country will have the same number of inhabitants as the European Union", overtaking the United States and becoming the third most populous nation in the world.
Nigeria's Minister of Industry, Okechukwu Enelamah, has attributed the rise in poverty to the recession that hit his country in 2016, assuring that the situation will change with government programmes to build new infrastructure and with greater autonomy granted to businesses in their development plans. The editorial team of Punch, a well-known local daily newspaper, takes the opposite view, launching an attack in an editorial against "an inept, corrupt and irresponsible leadership" that has failed to allow citizens to share in the wealth generated by Nigeria being the leading producer of oil in Africa and one of the most significant in the world.
Furthermore, the country's security is threatened by the presence of Boko Haram, a terrorist organisation operating primarily in the north, responsible for numerous attacks and kidnappings. This deep instability drives many people to flee, to the point that Nigeria is the country of origin of the majority of migrants who arrive in Italy each year.
The Brookings institution analysis highlights how 14 of the 18 countries in the world where poverty is on the rise are African. Within twelve years, the continent risks being home to 90 per cent of the world's poorest people. According to the same forecasts, the Democratic Republic of Congo is also set to overtake India in the ranking of nations with the highest number of inhabitants living in conditions of extreme poverty.
Researchers argue that at this rate it is impossible to achieve the first of the Sustainable Development Goals that the United Nations has set for 2030, while World Bank experts are more optimistic. All that remains is to await the results to be published on 17 October for a clearer picture of the energy the planet needs for a final push in the race against poverty.
