Joseph Inokotong, Abuja
The World Bank has said that more than 700 million people across the world still live on less than $1.90 per day despite progress made in the fight against extreme poverty. The bank said the alarming figure shows “roughly one in every 10 people on the planet who are often let down by bad governance and are especially vulnerable to the world’s most urgent challenges, namely climate change, pollution, fragility, conflict, violence, and forced migration”.
The World Bank in a publication stated that many of the world’s citizens are still entangled in extreme poverty, in spite of the giant strides recorded in the fight against the vice over the past quarter-century, where more than one billion people were freed from its deadly grip.
World Bank Vice President in charge of Development Finance (DFi), Akihiko Nishio, said “We face daunting, interconnected challenges, but IDA – and the entire World Bank Group – will help the poorest countries meet those challenges and continue our drive to end extreme poverty”.
The bank expressed worries that on top of these critical issues, the entire world is witnessing a slowdown in global economic growth, which has been the strongest driver of poverty reduction in the last quarter century.
It pointed out that “slower growth means poverty reduction will be more difficult. Progress will be more uncertain, especially in the poorest countries”.
To ease the challenge, it explained that the International Development Association (IDA), the bank’s concessional lending arm for the world’s poorest countries has played a key role in reducing poverty across the world since it was founded in 1960, having provided more than $360 billion in grants and near zero-interest loans for investments in 113 countries. It pointed out that in 2018 alone, IDA committed $24 billion in loans and grants to poor countries, adding that it would regularly evolve effective means of tackling poverty in the face of shifting nature of the challenges witnessed by low-income countries, as well as megatrends like growth of digital economy.
Meanwhile in response to the challenge, a group of donor and borrower representatives recently converged on Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to discuss where IDA should focus its programmes in the next three-year IDA cycle covering from 2021–23.
“We are working to ensure that our operational targets and financial resources for IDA19 meet the collective ambitions of our stakeholders and most importantly, the development needs of the people and countries we support”, said the World Bank.
It noted that “environmental investments, for example, are a growing priority. Climate change threatens agricultural systems, safety, and livelihoods and it is the poorest and most vulnerable people that are most affected having the least resources to adapt.
“So, as part of the World Bank Group’s climate strategy, IDA investments focus on boosting investments in adaptation and resilience as well as helping countries move to low-carbon economies. That means climate-smart agriculture, sustainable cities, resilient infrastructure and nature-based solutions, including measures to address pollution”.The World Bank recently revised its global economic growth projections downward – from 2.9 percent to 2.6 percent.