Africa Is Not Poor, It Is Poorly Managed -By Ezinwanne Onwuka

Poverty is a human condition characterized by sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.

According to the World Bank (1990), and the United Nations (1995), poverty has various manifestations which include the lack of income and productive resources sufficient to ensure sustainable livelihood, hunger, and malnutrition, ill health, limited or lack of access to education and other basic services, increased morbidity and mortality from illness, homelessness, inadequate, unsafe and degraded environment, social discrimination and exclusion. It is also characterized by lack of participation in decision making in civil, social and cultural life (World Bank, 2001).

Poverty is a global problem but it is chronic in Africa, the world’s second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. The poverty situation in African countries is precarious given the percentage of people living below $ 1 a day, moreso, when compared with other regions of the world. Poverty has become increasingly entrenched in Africa and continues to defy efforts to eradicate it.

Poverty in the developing world has become one of the biggest challenges facing not only the leaders of those countries, but also the developed world, as well. After over 80 years of colonial rule in Africa, and about five decades of independence, it is a known fact that poverty has actually gotten worse in Africa. Consequently, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal’s (SDG) mission to end extreme poverty globally by the year 2030 is unlikely to be met—no thanks, in large part, to Africa.

While the root causes of poverty in Africa are not different from the causes of poverty anywhere else, European colonialism and the scramble for Africa were partly to blame for the impoverishment of the continent. But the world has changed and African countries are now independent nations, so one can now charge that African leaders are now responsible for the poverty problem throughout the African continent.

Hence, while there are many other issues involved in the perpetuation of this problem, the writer takes the position that poor leadership and mismanagement may be responsible for the growing state of poverty in Africa. In other words, African leaders and governments hold the key to the eradication of the poverty problem.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first elected female president and former president of Liberia stated, during an interview with the BBC in August 2009, that “Africa is not poor; it is poorly managed.” It was aimed against corruption and she meant to assert that if corrupt officials mismanaged public funds or property, the country particularly, and continent generally will, as a result, be impoverished.

That is to say, the acute poverty in the continent is the result of the inept leadership, which has continued to run down the entire region. This explains why the struggle to lift more citizens out of extreme poverty is an indictment on successive African governments which have mismanaged the country’s vast natural resources through incompetence and corruption.

In addition to the above are the issues of accountability, transparency and openness in the application of anti-poverty measures by political leaders and their agencies. African leaders should be made to know that they are in power to provide services to their people and not to enrich themselves. Thus, the fight against corruption should be intensified within the region in order to guide against the abuse of funds and national resources that are meant to the uplift the standard of living of the people.

Reducing poverty in Africa requires the holistic approach of Africans cleaning its house, and instituting a corrupt-free progressive government led by capable, competent, qualified, progressive leaders, chosen through a clean election process; if the problem of poverty in Africa would ever be effectively addressed.

Unless the factors of embezzlement and mismanagement by African leaders are addressed, the cycle of poverty in Africa will gain momentum and continue to grow and will remain unresolved regardless of how much assistance Africa receives from the West.

Ezinwanne Onwuka, Cross River State
ezinwanne.dominion@gmail.com
+2348164505628