Posted: April 13th, 2023

What’s Cause of Poverty in Africa?

Introduction: “Poverty is a state of not having enough money to take care of basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter” (Audu). In another word, people do not have sufficient income to purchase enough food. Africa is a continent known for its deep history and rich culture but also know as a continent battling against poverty and disease (Audu). Poverty in Africa has been rising for the last quarter century while it has been falling in the rest of the developing world.
Poverty doesn’t result from just one or two causes. The problem entrenched poverty is extremely difficult to solve because of different factors and all interacting with one another. Three main sections cause poverty in Africa are economic, political and external. Body: Economic: Employment is the main route out of poverty for poor people in an undeveloped country. The government does very little to create more jobs for African nations even with students that graduates from college can’t find work.
With the unemployment rate increase, a lot of Africans have turned into armed robbers, blood money rituals, and secret cults organization, migrating outside Africa and turning into prostitution in order to survive. Therefore, the economic productivity is low but poverty rate is high. When leaders are not accountable to those they serve then there is a sign of corruption. Corruption both in government and business place heavy cost on society because it plays a major cause and a result of poverty. It’s because poverty can be fought in the presence of strong institution, and equitable distribution of resources (Collier).

However, programs that designed to fight poverty in Africa are not fully implemented because the funds end up in the hands of corrupt individuals, who pocket the majority (Bartle). This emphasizes poor governance because those in authority have failed to apprehend the corrupt. Therefore, it requires a non-corrupt government to turn public income into human development outcomes and strengthening of business confidence, economic and social. Political: Social inequality starts from cultural ideas about the relative worth of different genders, races, ethnic groups and social classes (Bartle).
According to Jeff Stats, in African history, apartheid laws defined a binary caste system that assigned different rights and social spaces to different races, using skin color to determine the opportunities available to individuals in each group. Base on this law it’s very inequality for people in Africa because people who are in low class will never able to change their level since they don’t have the opportunity and options to change it. External: With constant war and conflict in Africa makes it very difficult to farm, to work for living or earn money.
It’s hard to start ordinary life because many men are forces to flee from their homes to fight for the war. This will make the continent’s productivity goes down and poverty rates go up. Another factor that cause poverty in Africa is diseases such as malaria, HIV, and TB. When a member in a household is affected by any of those diseases there is very little resources are spent on treating the sick. This lead to people who are left behind with no resources to support themselves and the situation is worsened by poor health facilities.