2024: Nigeria, Congo DR top African countries living in extreme poverty-World Bank
…Says GDP growth remains at 3.3% for Nigeria...Inflation on high at 24.8%
Maureen Aguta
The World Bank says the average inflation in Nigeria will remain elevated at 24.8 per cent year-on-year in 2024. The global lender also disclosed that the rate of poverty reduction in the country is low and that Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo account for one in three Sub-Saharan African countries living in extreme poverty in 2024.
The inflation projection is, however, lower than February 2024 rate, which stood at 31.7 per cent.
This is contained in Africa’s Pulse Report released on Monday by the Bretton Woods institution.
The Bank recalled:”By February 2024, about one third of the sub-Saharan African countries with monthly available food price information (14 of 40 countries) had double-digit year-on-year rates of food inflation, with the fastest increases experienced in Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe,” adding that the rate of poverty reduction in the region “is slow and that Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo account for one in three of those living in extreme poverty.
“The region also faces the triple challenges of high extreme poverty, high inequality, and low transmission of growth to poverty reduction.
“The speed of poverty reduction has decreased tremendously since 2014. The rate of reduction was 3.1 per cent between 2010 and 2014, subsequently decreasing to 1.2 per cent between 2014 and 2019.
“In contrast, the rest of the world reduced extreme poverty on average by 9.2 per cent per year within the same time horizon, suggesting that the Africa region is falling further behind.
“In addition, there is substantial regional heterogeneity in where the poor are with Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo accounting for one in three of those living in extreme poverty.”
It further stated that Nigeria’s economic growth will remain at 3.3 per cent in 2024, saying this is against the backdrop of noticeable improvement in economic policies and implementations. Projection for 2025 to 2026 was, however, reduced by 0.1 percentage points to 3.6 per cent from its January projection of 3.7 per cent.
It also said that, “growth in Nigeria is projected at 3.3 per cent in 2024 and 3.6 per cent in 2025–26 as macroeconomic and fiscal reforms gradually start to yield results.
“A more stable macroeconomic environment, as the reforms’ initial shock dissipates, will lead to sustained but still slow growth of the non-oil economy.
“The oil sector is expected to stabilise with recovery in production and slightly lower prices. “Structural reforms will be needed to foster higher growth.
“Average inflation will remain elevated at 24.8 per cent in 2024, although it is expected to ease gradually to 15.1 per cent by 2026 on the back of monetary policy tightening and exchange rate stabilisation.”
The Bank noted that food inflation and the weakening of domestic currencies were still major drivers of inflation across countries in the sub Saharan Africa region.