Riches and Rags

Africa is home to some 160,000 people with personal fortunes worth in excess of $1m, a twofold increase in the number of wealthy individuals since the turn of the century that highlights the problem of deepening inequality as some of the world’s poorest nations register strong economic growth.

The combined wealth of African U.S. dollar millionaires is totalled $660 billion at the end of 2014, according to a report by New World Wealth.

At the same time, the number of  people in Africa living on less than $1.25 a day increased from 411.3 million in 2010 to 415.8 millon in 2011, World Bank data shows.

Nick Dearden, director of the advocacy group Global Justice Now said “From Nigeria to Mozambique you can see poverty rising at the same time as rapid growth. What does this mean? The growth is being gobbled up by the super-rich and transnational capital. And that means ordinary people, by comparison, find their lives even more impoverished.“It’s no wonder that rich individuals in Africa are getting richer, because we’re seeing a form of ‘development’ … which hugely benefits the wealthy but makes the lives of the poor even harder. Aid money, trade agreements and corporate ‘investment’ pushed by Britain are locking countries into a form of growth which is all about making the rich even more rich and the poor even more poor.” ”