50m more Africans face risk of poverty due to pandemic

Nearly 50 million Africans could be driven into extreme poverty in the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, the African Development Bank said on Tuesday.

Roughly a third of the continent — 425 million people — was already expected to live below the international poverty line of US$1.90 per day in 2020, the AfDB said in its African Economic Outlook. It said the situation would further deteriorate.

After Oceania, Africa is the least affected continent in the pandemic. It has recorded nearly 500,000 infections and almost 11,700 deaths.

But the health crisis and ensuing lockdowns have destroyed jobs, crippled incomes and devastated economies across the continent.

“Between 28.2 and 49.2 million more Africans could be pushed into extreme poverty” this year and next, the AfDB report said, with the first figure the baseline prediction and the latter the worst-case scenario.

The Abidjan-based institution, one of the world’s five largest multilateral development lenders, expects Africa to suffer a major recession.

GDP is forecast to contract between 1.7 percent to 3.4 percent this year.

That would be 5.6 to 7.3 percentage points lower than pre-pandemic forecasts.

Late last month the International Monetary Fund forecasted that sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP would shrink by 3.2 percent, and that incomes would drop to levels last seen in 2010.

The AfDB said that between 24.6 and 30 million jobs would be lost this year due to the virus crisis.