April 25, (THEWILL) – The World Bank has projected a grim outlook for Nigeria’s fight against poverty, warning that more Nigerians are expected to fall below the poverty line by 2027.
In a latest Africa Pulse report released at the ongoing Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington DC, the Bretton Woods institution said poverty in Nigeria and other resource-rich but fragile African economies is expected to rise by 3.6 percentage points between 2022 and 2027.
The report attributed the rise in poverty to Nigeria’s overreliance on oil revenues, persistent economic fragility, and weak governance structures.
Despite modest gains in Nigeria’s non-oil sector in the last quarter of 2024, it warned that the improvement is unlikely to yield broad-based poverty reduction due to enduring fiscal and institutional vulnerabilities.
“Poverty in resource-rich, fragile countries (which include large countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria) is expected to increase by 3.6 percentage points over 2022–27, being the only group in the region with increasing poverty rates.
“This follows a well-established pattern, whereby resource wealth combined with fragility or conflict is associated with the highest poverty rates—an average poverty rate of 46 per cent in 2024, 13 percentage points above non-fragile, resource-rich countries”, the report stated.
The Bank disclosed that Sub-Saharan Africa remains the poorest region globally, hosting 80% of the world’s 695 million people living in extreme poverty as of 2024. Nigeria, alongside three other countries in the region, accounts for half of the 560 million extremely poor people.
In comparison, South Asia was home to 8% of the global extremely poor population, East Asia and the Pacific 2%, and the Middle East and North Africa 5%.
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