Sub-Saharan Africa Holds 67% of the World’s Extreme Poor Yet Accounts for Just 15% of Its Population

In 2024, 847 million people live in extreme poverty globally, and 570 million of them, a staggering 67.2%, are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, a region whose poverty rate is not declining but rising.

East Asia Cut Its Poverty Rate by 57 Points in 32 Years, While Sub-Saharan Africa Has Slightly Moved in Three Decades

Between 1990 and 2022, East Asia & Pacific slashed its extreme poverty rate from 60.1% to just 2.9%, a 57-percentage-point fall, while Sub-Saharan Africa’s rate dropped by only 19.6 points, leaving 35% of its population still below the poverty line.

The World Has Halved Extreme Poverty Since 1990 – But COVID Reversed 25 Years of Progress in a Single Year

In 1990, more than half the world (53.7%) lived in extreme poverty; by 2024 that figure had fallen to 10.4%, lifting an estimated 1.5 billion people out of destitution over three decades. Yet in 2020, COVID-19 erased a generation of gains in a single year, and today, 847 million people still survive on less than $3 a day.