Global outbreak threatens progress on acute poverty

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Decades of progress in one of modern history’s greatest achievements, the fight against extreme poverty, are in danger of slipping away because of the COVID19 pandemic. The world could see its first increase in extreme poverty in 22 years after whittling it down to 10% of the population, further sharpening inequalities.

Up to 100 million more people globally could fall into the bitter existence of living on just $1.90 a day, according to the World Bank. That’s “well below any reasonable conception of a life with dignity,” the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty wrote this year. It comes on top of the 736 million people already there, half in just five countries: Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Congo and Bangladesh.

Even China, Indonesia and South Africa are expected to have more than 1 million people each fall into extreme poverty, the World Bank says.

“It’s a huge, huge setback for the entire world,” said former U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Gayle Smith, now president of the ONE Campaign. She called the international response to the overall crisis “stunningly meager.”

Most of those newly at risk are in subSaharan Africa, which had some of the world’s fastest growing economies in recent years. The World Bank shared with the Associated Press data out of Ethiopia as it takes a global measure of the pandemic’s effects. Similar efforts are under way in more than 100 countries.

Ethiopia had boasted of one of the world’s most dynamic economies. Its government looked to emulate China’s astonishing lifting of more than 800 million people from poverty. Some people embraced new manufacturing jobs. Others joined the growing sectors of hospitality, services and aviation, hoping to join Africa’s expanding middle class.

Now the country, along with Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, is expected to see half of subSaharan Africa’s new extreme poor.

Ethiopia’s prime minister has taken the global lead in appealing to rich countries to cancel the debt of poorer ones.

Mulugeta Ayene / Associated Press Amsale Hailemariam, a domestic worker who lost her job because of the pandemic, hangs clothes outside her small tent in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.