INEQUALITY THREATENS OUR HARD-FOUGHT PROGRESS
YOU could sit them all around a dinner table, or inside a single elevator. Meet eight men. The eight men who – you may need to read this twice – have as much wealth as the 3.6-billion people who make up the poorest half of the world.
Welcome to the worldwide crisis of inequality– one in which Africa takes centre stage.
Our continent continues to see the potential of countless talented girls and boys kept at bay. And for all her abundant natural resources and wealth, Africa sees so much of this wealth leave our borders and shores, never to reach our brothers and sisters.
Take the number of African billionaires – it has doubled since 2010. Meanwhile the number of people living in poverty in Africa has increased by 50-million since 1990.
Trickle-down economics? Give me a break. Rampant inequality breeds discontent, frustration, fear and anger – as we saw last year when citizens around the world expressed themselves at the polls.
In the US, billionaire Donald Trump won the election after rallying voters who’d had lost their jobs as manufacturers looked for cheaper labour and bigger profits.
In the Philippines, voters rejected mainstream politicians and instead elected Rodrigo Duterte, after the country saw years of booming economic growth but virtually no benefits for the 25% of the population who have been living in poverty for the last two decades.
And in South Africa, one of the most unequal countries in the world, the ANC, the party of Nelson Mandela, was handed its worst defeat since the end of apartheid and lost control of Pretoria, Nelson Mandela Bay, and Johannesburg during local government elections.
Governments have allowed all this anger to build up – and unless it is serious about tackling the growing gap between the richest and ordinary people, it will not go away. The super-rich will amass ever