Myth of rising poverty in Africa

By Tunde Obadina
 
President Goodluck Jonathan’s chief economic adviser, Nwanze Okidegbe, late last year refuted a claim credited to the World Bank Country Director in Nigeria that 100 million Nigerians lived in extreme poverty. Okidegbe rightly described the proposition and its implication that impoverishment is deepening in Africa’s most populous nation as spurious and astonishing.

What was interesting in Okidegbe’s response was his argument that 100m Nigerians could not be living on less than US$1.25 per day (roughly 200 naira) as this level of income is barely enough to enable an individual buy a loaf of bread in many parts of Nigeria. Furthermore, he noted, the fact that about 112 million Nigerians are active mobile phone subscribers suggest that this is not home to 100 million destitute people. To buttress this point, a recent survey by Abuja-based NOI Polls reported that about 80% of Nigerians spend at least $1 a day on food.  All this indicates that the depressingly high poverty figures that the World Bank and other international development agencies publish for Nigeria do not tally with prevailing conditions in the country. 

The World Bank appears to have realised the error in its presentations of poverty in Nigeria. In its Nigeria Economic Report for July 2014 the bank submitted that poverty levels in Nigeria have probably been over-estimated, and this has been mainly due to faulty data produced by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), a Nigerian government agency. The report explained that the latest NBS poverty estimates were based on a 2009/2010 national household survey that probably underestimated consumption levels in the country. Using data from two subsequent surveys, conducted in 2010/2011 and 2012/2013, the bank calculated that the poverty rate in Nigeria fell from 35.2% in 2010-2011 to 33.1% in 2012-2013. This is significantly less than the 62% poverty rate derived from the unreliable 2009/2010 household survey. The World Bank report concluded that 58 million people in Nigeria live in extremely poverty - not 100 million as earlier claimed by the head of its mission in the country.

Nonetheless, international organisations such as the United National Development Programme, continue to publish data claiming that about 100 million people in Nigeria are acutely poor. Even the World Bank in its Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015 published in early October 2014 stated that 10% of the estimated 1.01 billion people in the world livingon less than US$1.25 a day are to be found in Nigeria. Some readers may think that it does not matter much whether the number of extremely poor in Nigeria is 100 million or 58 million or whether the rate is 62% or 35% – clearly poverty remains a major problem in the country, regardless.

It certainly matters whether the poverty level is closer to 100 million or nearer 58 million The 42 million difference is greater than the combined population of at least nine countries in West Africa. Overstating poverty in Africa's most populous nation by such a large amount clearly has implications for the accuracy of poverty figures published for the continent. Deduct 48 million from the 415.4 million people that the World Bank reckons were extremely poor in sub-Saharan Africa in 2011, we are left with 367.4 million, which suggest that the region did not have the highest number of acutely poor in the world, as claimed in the bank. In South Asia 399 million people lived on less than US$1.25 per day.

The fact that penury is actually falling in Nigeria does not mean that poverty is not a major issue in the country. It obviously is. If we use a global US$10 per day per person at purchasing power parity as the income/expenditure threshold to enter the middle class, at least 95% of Nigerians exist at some level of poverty. But as high as this is, poverty has been falling. Judged by today's living standard the poverty rate in Nigeria half a century ago was probably over 99% and vast majority of the population were extremely poor.

Finance – The magic app Africa needs to develop

By Tunde Obadina

In his book, Civilisation: The West and the Rest, economic historian Niall Ferguson contended that Western Europe was able to out-develop other regions of the world because it developed what he described as six killer applications that others lacked. These were competition, consumerism, democracy, medicine, science and work ethic.

There is no doubt that in the period leading to the industrial revolution European countries exceeded in these areas, at least five of them. It is debatable whether Europeans were harder workers or believed in the goodness of labour more than peoples elsewhere in the world did. Nonetheless, Ferguson’s thesis has merit over the works of many other analysts who have explained Europe’s material advancement in terms of geography, climate, culture or politics, though it is unlikely to be the last prognosis on the fundamental drivers of Europe’s economic advance. It is debateable whether Ferguson’s six apps were root causes or the consequences of Europe’s wealth creation. It may be that European countries had more competition and consumerism and better education and medicine because they were wealthier than other nations. 

People in other regions knew science and medicine in the pre-industrial age, but Europe was able to push ahead in these fields because it had the material resources to invest in their development. Competition, consumerism and the work ethic are also the consequences of increased economic activity and wealth. As for democracy, it is debatable how much of it existed in mid-eighteenth century Britain. In any case modern day China and some other non-democratic Asian countries have achieved rapid economic growth without this app. 

There is one crucial element missing in Ferguson’s growth enhancing apps list. It is financial innovation. This is the creative use of money/capital to enable production and trade and thereby create wealth. Although all regions of the world used money in one form or the other in pre-industrialisation eras, it was in Europe that financial innovation developed and became integral to economic development.

We cannot comprehend the occurrence of the industrial revolution without understanding the role of financial institutions in its emergence and evolution. The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without the operation of financial institutions such as banking, insurance, joint stock and debt. It was the fuller understanding that money and capital can be used to create wealth that gave Europeans a considerable advantage over others.  Financial innovation enabled people and companies to share risks, share ownership, mobilise resources for production, generate future wealth, and dare I say, spend beyond their immediate earnings.

In a modern economy, virtually every aspect of production, distribution and consumption is underpinned by finance. A subsistence farmer may, without need for money, use his hands to plough his land and gather his crops. But if he is to increase output, he is likely to require money to obtain inputs such as fertilizer, seeds, ploughs etc. Beyond a certain level of pure labour productivity it is capital and the knowledge of how to use it that creates additional wealth. A commercial farm owner uses money to buy labour, equipment and services needed to produce at a profitable level. Of course, he could exchange some produce for the work of labourers, but it is not feasible to use barter to acquire a tractor or the fuel to run it. Financial debt allows the farm to pay labourers for work and to pay suppliers for other inputs needed to create wealth. Financial instruments allow individuals and companies to pay for the production of goods and services before the items reach the market and generate revenue.

This is not to say that all economic production issues can be simply solved with money. A subsistence farmer cultivating a tiny plot of land with potential to generate a maximum of $1,000 in annual revenue is unlikely to be given a commercial bank loan of $10,000 at 10% interest rate to buy a tractor or other input. This is not because bankers do not appreciate the importance of food, but the fact that the farmer is unlikely to be unable to service the loan. Even here, money used as a measure of value helps us to assess the present and future commercial viability of any given business endeavour.   

Finance is the most vital element in the allocation of scarce resources in a market economy where decisions on production and consumption are based on assessments of value. We should be careful in the current social climate of distrust of bankers and other financial services practitioners that we in Africa do not undervalue the importance of finance in economic growth and development. African countries need to develop systems for financial risk sharing, savings and debt management to enable economic collaboration between individuals across ethnic, national and regional boundaries.   A modern financial system enables people with excess funds in one part of the world to invest and share risks with strangers in another of the planet. This could involve all sorts of activities - the building of factories, construction of railways, planting of new species of crops or setting up of novel services.