The Poverty Line In Africanomics
I am an African, and I’m very egoistic about it. This means that I’ve gotten used to the daily media coverage of Africa — hungry, poor, cursed, diseased and everything negative. I’ve also gotten used to people referring to this continent of over 50 nations and 2000 languages as “the nation of Africa.
The amazing part of the media’s coverage of Africa is that I get to see hungry kids (with bones showing) on the T.V. — and never see any close by in real life! Amazing isn’t it? Anyways, this article is not meant to fight the false (negative) media coverage, Chicamod is doing just that. This article is meant to discuss what the word ‘poverty line' means and what it should mean. Please note that I am no expert at economics nor do I have enough patience to write this piece sequentially — paragraph by paragraph.
The global standard used to determine who is poor is put at $2. What this means is that if you do not spend at two dollars a day, you’re poor. Based on this standard, an amazing 40% of people living in sub-Saharan Africa are poor. What a really poor continent right? I mean, what can two dollars do for anyone a day? Well, let me introduce you to what I call Africanomics.
I grew up in a Nigerian town (more like an emerging town) where the living standard was and still is low. During my high school, there was a restaurant where food could be gotten (good food I mean) for 50 naira which is currently two cents — I believe the restaurant is still there. We bought water daily from hawkers at 20 naira for a 20-litre-jerrican. That means I could (and still can) get 3 plates of food and 40 litres of water all for less than a dollar in Wukari, where I grew up. Despite eating three plates of food and using more water than I can finish, according to the poverty line, I’m still poor! Amazing right?
There are apartments for as little as $45 a month as well. Transport within town should cost you $0.70 a day (at most). I guess it’s safe to assume that the middle class bachelors who live in Wukari are all poor as most spend less than two dollars a day. In Uganda where I currently reside, a lot of people live below two dollars a day yet, are satisfied and have a roof over their heads — I can bet my thumb that cannot happen in the U.K. or the U.S.
Now I won’t go on and on giving examples but then, that should give you an insight of what it’s like to be satisfied in Africa, yet viewed as poor by ‘the rest of the world’.
What am I driving at? Using a particular global standard to measure who is poor and who is not, is not only grossly inaccurate but drawn out of ignorance for varying world costs of living — country by country. A varying standard of measuring who is poor and who is rich should vary from town to town (yes, there are ridiculously expensive towns in every African country). Only, and only if this is done can the true (and not inflated) number of poor Africans be ascertained.
Welcome to Africanomics.
