Verster, Empowering the poor: The Bible and the poor in informal settlements ...- THE CHALLENGE OF POVERTY IN AFRICA
2.1 The challenge of poverty
Poverty is a serious challenge. Effah (2006:71) explains that the defini-
tion of poverty should be made much broader. He refers to the fact that a
human development perspective further expands the concept of poverty
to include poor health, lack of good education, lack of a decent standard
of living, denial of political freedom, lack of human rights, vulnerability,
exposure to risk, powerlessness and voicelessness. He is of the opinion
that to tackle poverty, these dimensions of poverty are interrelated and
governments have to tackle poverty from different fronts. Van der Walt
(2003:40) also mentions that all aspects of human life are touched by
poverty such as the economic, spiritual, judicial and ethical life. Coetzee
(2002:5) prefers the word “vulnerability” to poverty because it allows for
a larger framework and goes beyond the particular situational condi-
tions: “It recognises the processes involved in the construction of well-
being”.
Poverty in Africa, especially south of the Sahara, is endemic. Wood
(2007:5) mentions that in 1998, the World Bank estimated that 291 mil-
lion people in sub-Saharan Africa were living in absolute poverty. These
people were trying to survive on less than US$1 per day, a total of
US$365 for an entire year. He explains that significantly, this was an
increase from 217 million people just ten years prior, representing an
increase of more than 34 %. He mentions that by 1998 half of the people
living south of the Sahara Desert in Africa were living in extreme pov-
erty. More than ten years later, the picture is still dire. The Africa Pro-
gress Report (2010:23) explains that to the detriment of hundreds of
millions of Africans, the continent’s strong economic growth over the
past five years has not translated into social protection or widespread
poverty reduction. The report continues that while there is controversy
around both the method of computation and the actual level of Africa’s
poverty rate, most African countries will not reach their poverty-
reduction goals by 2015 and that the global economic crisis is expected
to add millions to the ranks of the working poor, with the International
Labour Office (ILO) estimating that the rate of working poverty in sub-
Saharan Africa has already increased from 58.9 % in 2007 to as much as
67.9 % in late 2009.