Economic Report on Africa 2005: Meeting the Challenges of Unemployment and Poverty in Africa

Abstract

Poverty in Africa is substantially higher than in other developing regions. More enigmatic is that poverty in Africa is chronic and rising. The share of the total population living below the $1 a day threshold of 46 per cent is higher today than in the 1980s and 1990s—this despite significant improvements in the growth of African GDP in recent years. The implication: poverty has been unresponsive to economic growth. Underlying this trend is the fact that the majority of people have no jobs or secure sources of income. This report focuses on four key challenges for Africa in the fight against unemployment and poverty: achieving structural transformation to break away from the underutilizations of rural labor, addressing widespread youth unemployment, harnessing globalization to create decent jobs and creating an enabling environment for accelerated expansion of private sector job-creation through increased investments.