According to the World Bank, poverty is still concentrated in the
northern parts of the country, especially the Upper West Region and the
western part of the Northern Region, despite Ghana’s progress in poverty
reduction.
According to the Bank, 40 per cent of Ghana’s poor live in the north.
“Inequality has increased and in particular there is an increase in
spatial employment – the divide between the southern part and the
northern part has increased and poverty is increasingly concentrated in
the north”, Vasco Molini, a Senior Economist at the World Bank said, at a
dialogue in Accra on Friday October 15.
Molini added that about 40 per cent of Ghana’s population are
vulnerable to poverty, with their mean expenditure very close to the
poverty line, though Ghana has managed to reduce poverty from about 53
per cent, to 21.4 per cent within 1990 and 2012.
A fact sheet of the World Bank made available to
ghanabusinessnews.com, says the poverty rate has fallen below 40 per
cent in the Central Region and below 20 per cent in most of the southern
half of the country: the Greater Accra Region, Western, Ashanti and
Eastern Regions, along with the southern parts of the Volta and Brong
Ahafo regions.
In contrast “the poverty rate remains far above 40 per cent in most
districts in the North” and “one out of three poor people lives in the
northern rural areas, while in 1991 it was only one out of five.”
Interestingly, the World Bank’s map of the most poverty-stricken
areas in northern Ghana matches the map of areas in the north lacking
roads and other infrastructure.
The findings came as a surprise to one Member of Parliament present
at the dialogue, Kwabena Appiah-Pinkrah, MP for the Akrofuom
constituency in the Ashanti Region who was left in disbelief and in
doubt of the credibility and methodology of the World Bank’s latest
findings on poverty in Ghana.
“There is something wrong somewhere,” he said.
Speaking later in the day, the President of the African Development
Bank (AfDB), Dr Akinwumi Adesina who was in Accra to mark ‘End Poverty
Day’ with the World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, also said that while
the poverty rate is only four per cent in the Greater Accra region, it
is as high as 80 per cent in the Northern Region.
Some representatives from civil society attributed the worrying
situation to the absence of a full trickle down of the huge resources
being allocated to the region, to the grassroots and the intended
beneficiaries.
Poor agricultural productivity per hectare, concentration of
industries in the south and its attendant lack of economic activity and
employment, and poor coordination of the activities of the various
governmental and non-governmental actors in the region were also
identified as challenges contributing to poverty in northern Ghana.
No comments:
Post a Comment