A report by the World Poverty Clock has indicated that more than 2.8 million Ghanaians are living in extreme poverty.
This represents about 10 percent of the entire population of the country.
This means that over 2.8 million Ghanaians are living below the global poverty line of a $1.9 spending a day.
The report added that real-time data projections show that about 28 Ghanaians escape extreme poverty every hour, giving the country a fairly positive rank on the continent and in the world.
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However, the report adds that Ghana is on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Goal 1 of ending poverty in all forms by 2030.
The report shows that Ethiopia is the only African country that is on the same level as Ghana as of August 2018. It is expected that both countries will be able to reduce extreme poverty to at least 3% of their respective populations.
Ghana was the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa to reduce poverty by half, as expected by the Millennium Development Goal 1.
But a large number of its people still live in extreme poverty. Most of these people live in the rural areas. Those in the urban areas who suffer extreme poverty have a challenge accessing better infrastructure in the country.
Other features of extreme poverty in rural areas include low income, social exclusion, and high vulnerability to disasters and diseases.
The report also showed that a cursory mapping of the extreme poverty trends in Ghana indicates a gradual decline over the past decade.
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Between 1991 and 2014, poverty levels had dropped by over 50%.
As of 2014, 24% of Ghana’s population, representing 6.4 million people, were considered poor.
This achievement has been attributed to the various social and pro-poor interventions by successive governments. However, experts have said that these may amount to nothing if the government does not reverse the rising unemployment situation and increasing cost of living.
Meanwhile, Nigeria has overtaken India to become the leading country in extreme poverty in the world.
The oil-rich country has been marked red as being in danger of not meeting the SDG target as the number of persons living in extreme poverty keeps soaring.
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87 million of its 197 million population, are reported to be living in extreme poverty, with at least 5 people becoming extremely poor every hour.
Other countries in the league with Nigeria that show rising level of extreme poverty are Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo, South Sudan, Chad, Niger, Angola, Central African Republic and Zambia,
The data however shows that South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan, Eritrea, Libya, Mali, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Benin, Togo, Guinea, Guinea Bissau are currently not on target of meeting the SDG goal given their current extreme poverty escape rate.
The report found that in Gabon, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, less than 3% of their respective populations lived in extreme poverty.
There are currently over 630 million people living in extreme poverty all over the world.
