A recent report by Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization in USA, has put Nigeria atop the world poverty statistics — ahead of India.
The report, titled ‘The Start of a New Poverty Narrative’, says Nigeria has now taken over as the nation with the highest number of extremely poor people in the world, while the Republic of Congo is the second poorest in the world.
The report reads: “According to our projections, Nigeria has already overtaken India as the country with the largest number of extreme poor in early 2018, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo could soon take over the number 2 spot (Figure 1 below).
“At the end of May 2018, our trajectories suggest that Nigeria had about 87 million people in extreme poverty, compared with India’s 73 million. Extreme poverty in Nigeria is growing by six people every minute, while poverty index in India continues to fall.”
The report also predicted that by the end of 2018, there would be 3.2 million extremely poor people in Africa.
“Africans account for about two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor and that if the current trend persists, Africa will account for nine-tenths by 2030. Fourteen out of 18 countries where the number of extreme poor is rising are in Africa.”
