Africa’s growth continues but so does its poverty
Mbongeni Mguni | Tuesday October 13, 2026 12:08
“The people come to understand that wealth is not the fruit of labour but the result of organised, protected robbery.”
Frantz Fanon’s famous quote from his 1961 masterpiece, Wretched of the Earth, are likely ringing true for many across the continent.
The French philosopher wrote passionately and unflinchingly about oppression, inequality and injustice in the class and colonialist system.
“Rich people are no longer respectable people; they are nothing more than flesh eating animals, jackals and vultures which wallow in the people's blood.”
Sixty-five years after he published his book, Fanon would be pleased to note that the entire continent has shrugged off its colonial masters. He would be far less pleased to read a sobering update by the World Bank this week noting that poverty continues to stalk the average African, for whom liberation largely has meant swapping one form of imprisonment for another.
According to the World Bank’s Africa Economic Update released on Tuesday, while sub-Saharan growth is expected to average 4.3 percent this year defying global geopolitical pressures, this level’s “poverty-reducing impact will likely remain limited”.
In fact, other data by World Bank researchers indicate that between 2026 and 2028, between 47.8 percent and 46.2 percent respectively of all sub-Saharans will be technically poor, meaning they live on less than US$3 per day or P41.50.
The challenge, researchers say, is that much of the growth being recorded in Africa is not directly linked to developmental outcomes for the majority of citizens.
“Although strong external demand and favourable prices for oil, minerals and other commodities are benefiting resource-rich economies, extractive activity has weak direct links to employment and household incomes,” the Bank said. “While per capita GDP growth is projected to increase to 1.8 percent in 2026, income gains remain too modest to indicate a significant improvement in living standards. “These modest income gains could be further eroded by conflict in the Middle East, declining development assistance, elevated debt service burdens, and El Niño–related climate shocks, particularly for poor and food-insecure households.”
Fanon would be further outraged to find that 65 years after publishing his masterpiece and dying in the same year, the shackles condemning Africans to poverty across the continent include poor governance, corruption, human rights abuses and others.
More horrifying for him would be to discover that the continent’s vast natural wealth has in many countries been squandered by liberation “heroes” colluding with former imperialist powers.
While Africa is referred to as the continent of the future, both for its youthful population and its still massive natural wealth, particularly in globally sought-after critical minerals, these attributes are cold comfort for the 47.8 percent who are surviving on less than P42 per day in 2026.
In absolute numbers, the World Bank estimates that this year, more than 640 million Africans are living under US$3 per day, with the number set to reach close to 660 million by 2028. The data shows that while the rate of poverty appears to be declining as a percentage, in absolute terms it is rising. The difference is the rising population i.e the percentage declines because it is measured against a rising population.
“The limited poverty impact of growth reflects its composition and distribution: in many countries, growth has been driven by capital-intensive extractive sectors with weak employment linkages, while gains have often been geographically concentrated and insufficient to outpace rapid population growth. “Furthermore, the concentration of poor households in low-productivity informal activities and subsistence agriculture has constrained the translation of economic growth into broad-based improvements in living standards. “More alarmingly, the absolute number of poor people continues to rise, reflecting the challenge posed by rapid population growth.”
The result has been general unrest across the continent. The troubles of COVID-19 and its role in exacerbating inequality have created high cynicism amongst ordinary Africans. The expression “we can’t eat GDP” has become a rallying cry on social media, a platform that has become the go-to place for citizens wishing to ventilate their frustrations.
In Botswana, a June update from Statistics Botswana indicated that as at March 2024 at national level, 28.1 percent of the population experienced moderate food insecurity, 19.1 percent experienced severe food insecurity, while 52.8 percent were food secure or mildly food insecure.
This last category was an improvement from 50.6 percent in 2022-2023, 46.7 percent in 2021-2022 and 49.2 percent in 2018-2019.
The prevalence of severe food insecurity went down from 22.2 percent in 2018-2019 to 20.2 percent in 2020-2021, then jumped to 26.2 percent in 2021-2022 before declining to 19.1 percent in 2023-2024.
While the numbers are influenced by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, they do indicate the challenges faced by the majority of citizens in the country.
However, Botswana’s situation is largely ameliorated by heavy social welfare spending, which in recent years has averaged P10 billion, a figure that has been rising despite declining budget revenues.
The last available data from Statistics Botswana, covering the third quarter of 2019, indicated that 57.9% or 387,503 households in the country were receiving social safety net packages. A more recent figure from last month suggests about 21 percent who are in need of coverage are not receiving.
Elsewhere in Africa, governments are simply unable to extend social safety nets, leaving their citizens at the mercy of NGOs, philanthropists and others.
The World Bank believes Artificial Intelligence could give the continent an opportunity to lift more of its citizens out of poverty.
“AI is already transforming the African economies, but the scale and distribution of the gains are still limited,” researchers said. “Some early signals are encouraging, showing that African countries have become increasingly active in software development since the AI boom.”
Nigeria’s GitHub developer base has expanded tenfold since 2020 and Ghana’s nearly eightfold, with new registrations accelerating after free AI coding assistants became available.
The promise of AI is similar to what electricity, telecommunications and the Internet also promised decades ago. This involves access to mainstream opportunities, productivity gains, the ability to leverage innovation and lift people out of poverty. In the same way that electricity enabled the villager of yesteryear to set up a small bakery, AI would enable the same villager to research how to optimise his production, sharpen his targeting of the market, keep updated accounts at little costs and constantly upgrade his skills and efficiencies.
That dream is dependent on enabling poor people to access AI, which means affordable devices, connectivity and requisite literacy. The danger is that for most countries, in its present form, AI could benefit those who are already at an advantage.
“The immediate risk for most African economies is not mass displacement of poor workers by AI, but rather that the productivity gains from AI accrue almost entirely to highly educated workers, formal firms and richer urban households, while farmers, informal enterprises, schools, clinics, and communities in lagging areas remain excluded.”
The World Bank is urging countries to enhance their investments in connectivity, electricity, digital skills and computing capacity in productive urban centres and secondary cities, where agglomeration effects can accelerate AI adoption and productivity gains. At the same time, these hubs should be connected to poorer rural and underserved areas through lower-cost feeder infrastructure and targeted digital services.
Ensuring that coverage translates into effective use will also require complementary investments in reliable electricity, affordable devices and data affordability.
“The decisive policy question is not how many people can be covered by a nominal network signal, but how many poor households can afford a suitable device, keep it charged, obtain reliable high-speed service and use locally relevant AI applications. “If African countries make that transition, AI can become a platform for broad-based productivity growth and poverty reduction. “If they do not, it will amplify the advantages of those already connected.”
For Fanon, the latter possibility would have been completely unacceptable.