According to Un.org, there are 836 million people who live in extreme poverty and 783 million people live below the international poverty line of US$1.90 a day. When it comes to the word “Poverty”, most people would think of the condition of being poor. On the other hand, poverty is much more than just the lack of income and resources. It includes hunger, malnutrition (the state of being lack of nutrition which causes physical health problems), limited access to education, discrimination from societies as well as the right to make decisions. (Un.org) To help the tremendous amount of people who live in poverty, Goal 1 has set a clear target which is to “End poverty in all its form everywhere”.
In SDG class, we are required to choose a particular country and research about goal 1 in that country and I chose Angola, the least-developed country in Africa. Here is what I got from my research of Angola:
9/18/2018
Angola Poverty Research
Fun Fact: Angola is the largest but least-developed country in Africa (Borgenproject.org)
In 2008, Angola’s poverty rate at the national poverty line is 36.6%. It is interesting when talking about poverty in Angola because its economy is blooming because of the oil industry. However, poverty becomes a concerning topic in Angola because many Angolans are living in extreme poverty.
Talking about economic bloom, Angola is a country with extremely rich resource. It is the second largest oil producer in Africa and the fourth country with the most diamonds. In addition, the country also has a huge amount of lumber, fish, and minerals. These are probably the major causes of the booming economy of Angola.
Despite the great industry of resources, Two-Thirds of Angolans population live on less than $2 a day and they did not give that much value to the industry.
The government of Angola claims that the poverty rates have dropped; however, corruption is still a major factor. There are many questions like “Where has all the money go?”
One of the causes of poverty in Angola is the civil war between 1975 to 2002. This civil war left a huge tragedy for Angola, causing countless deaths and millions of internally displaced people. This war destroyed nearly all of the development in each factor including healthcare( There is only 1 doctor in 10,000 people), education, economy, etc. Talking about healthcare lacks, it is one of the major factors that cause poverty in Angola. Many people are hard to find treatments when they are sick. Some died because of sickness and some do not have enough energy to work which caused the work rate to boost. Therefore, there are many more works that need to be done to rise up the economy to meet the international standards.
Angola has been ranked 149 out of 186 on the poverty scale by The 2016 Human Development Index Team. In fact, 94 percent of rural households are categorized as poor since the poverty in Angola rises in the rural areas.
Talking about the topic of electricity, there is an extremely low rate of electricity access, especially in rural areas. There is only 6% of rural households that are accessed to electricity. Water is also one of the major problems in Angola. The amount of people who are not accessed to safe water resources is 38 percent of the population.
Many children do not have access to education which causes employment really difficult. 34.6 percent have unequal access to education.
The other cause of poverty is because of the high fertility rate. Therefore, the education rate is so low.
https://borgenproject.org/poverty-angola-causes-updates-statistics/
This is the best website I used for this research. For more information, you can go and check.