African Migrants
1. Irregular arrivals of migrants in Italy via the Mediterranean from North Africa amounted to almost 114,300 between January and August, almost twice as many as in the same period in 2022
2. More than 2,000 people have died or gone missing since the start of the year attempting this crossing, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
3. Youths account for 60% of all of Africa’s jobless, according to the World Bank.
4. South Africa is the world’s most unequal country. 10 percent of the population owns more than 80 percent of the wealth. (World Bank Report)
5. In 2019, 35 percent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa were estimated to be living in extreme poverty, compared to 9 percent in South Asia or 1 percent in East Asia and the Pacific.
6. While Africa has over 65 per cent of the world’s uncultivated land, it is a net food importer
Conflict
1. AU has been unable to either prevent or stop conflict in Africa. Between 1990 and 2015, State and non-state actors in Africa waged about 630 armed conflicts. (Some of the prominent conflicts by non-state actors are: the Tuareg separatist and jihadist insurgencies in Mali; Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria; jihadist and militia insurgencies in Burkina Faso; al-Shabaab in Somalia, the ethnic war in the Central African Republic and the emerging conflict in the Cabo Delgado Province in Mozambique.)
2. One of the few cases when AU’s troops successfully aided in halting conflict was in Darfur, Sudan. In 2005, AU had more than 5,000 troops located in this war torn region. They did an admirable, professional job and in so doing showed that AU was capable of enforcing peace across Africa.
Trade
1. One of the AU’s most notable achievements was the African Continental Free Trade Area, which came into effect in 2021 and envisages the formation of the world’s largest free trade area, encompassing 1.2 billion people in 55 countries
Economic Development in Africa Report 2023
1. The trade deficit in pharmaceutical products increased from -$2.3 billion in 2000 to -$12.5 billion in 2020.
2. In 2022, Africa contributed to only 1.9 per cent of global supply chain finance volume ($2.2 trillion) and remains the most underdeveloped supply chain finance market across major regions.
General
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2019/goal-01/
3. About 79 per cent of the world’s poor live in rural areas.
4. More than one third of employed workers in sub-Saharan Africa still live on less than $1.90 a day
5. The differences among regions are stark: 92 per cent of children are covered by social protection systems in Europe and Northern America, 56 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean, but only 13 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa, and 14 per cent in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia.
https://reliefweb.int/report/world/conflict-remains-dominant-driver-africas-spiraling-food-crisis#:~:text=Some%20111%20million%20of%20those,food%20insecurity%20are%20facing%20conflict.
6. More than 80 percent of the record 137 million Africans facing acute food insecurity are in conflict-affected countries underscoring that conflict continues to be the primary driver of Africa’s food crisis.
7. The DRC continues to have the largest number of highly food insecure people in the world (25.9 million). This food vulnerability is concentrated in the east of the DRC, where an estimated 120 armed groups, some sponsored by neighboring countries, have perpetuated instability for years.
8. There are an estimated 20 million people in Ethiopia in need of food aid (a 137-percent increase from 2020). This spike in acute food insecurity is largely the result of the civil conflict that began in November 2020 and has engulfed Tigray and other parts of northern Ethiopia.
9. In Nigeria, 19.5 million people are experiencing acute food insecurity. This is nearly a 10-fold increase from 2018 when there were 2.5 million acutely food insecure in the country. Most of the critically food insecure live in the northeastern region that has been destabilized by Boko Haram and its offshoot, the Islamic State of West Africa.
