Why Africa Is Poor

There are a few ideas to why Africa may be so poor. According to a study done by Gallup World in 2013, "the ten countries with the highest proportion of residents living in extreme poverty were all in sub-Saharan Africa." This shows the severity of the poverty in Africa. Extreme poverty is explained as living on less than or equal to $1.25 a day. If you put that into perspective of your own life, that may seem impossible. In our textbook, it is stated that "Three of four Africans live on less than $2 a day" (World Bank 2011). It is important to understand and look for reasons to why a continent gets to this point of extreme poverty as Africa has. One suggestion to why Africa may be poor, is the amount of war and conflict in the countries. "Almost half of African countries are experiencing or have recently ended civil conflicts." (Gettleman 2010, 73) (International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues) These wars come from ethnic and civil rights conflict, and unstable governments. Wars can leave the governments of country with nothing as spending is focused on supporting the war. The people of the countries feel and experience this nothingness and this leads to them falling into extreme poverty. War and conflict is something that is present in Africa now and has been in the past. This is part of Africa's history. Another factor that explains the state in which Africa has found itself, is
In my opinion, these are the most prevalent and accurate explanations. Although war is still ongoing, it has also been part of the history of Africa. This is I believe that the history of Africa is the biggest leading factor to the continents poverty. The history includes these wars and the destructive slave trade that I mentioned earlier. Along with these factors, Africa's history is everything that leads up to where the country is