When it comes to the campaign to reduce extreme poverty around the world, there is both good and bad news to report.

According to the World Bank, significant progress has been made in recent decades to rescue people from crushing poverty.

“In 2015, more than a billion fewer people were living in extreme poverty than in 1990,” states a World Bank Group report entitled Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018: Piecing together the poverty puzzle. Much of the progress has been powered by global economic growth and increasing wealth in many developing nations, especially in East Asia, the Pacific and South Asia.

“This impressive progress has brought us closer to achieving the World Bank’s target of reducing extreme poverty to less than three per cent of the world’s population by 2030,” the report declares. “Half of all countries included in the global poverty counts already have less than three per cent of their populations living under the international poverty line [IPL], which defines extreme poverty for global monitoring.”

In 1990, approximately 36 per cent of the world’s total population endured extreme poverty. Extreme poverty, the report notes, is “defined by the IPL as consumption [or income] less than US $1.90 a day in 2011 purchasing power parity.” Flash forward to 2015 and the percentage of the world’s population living in extreme poverty had dropped to 10 per cent.

“The number of people living in extreme poverty stood at 736 million in 2015, down from nearly two billion in 1990,” the World Bank reports.

However, the poverty puzzle is far from being solved. In many developing countries, women lack economic empowerment and tend to be poorer than men. For example, when wider consumption patterns, including food and other goods, were taken into consideration, the World Bank found that in Malawi, “women have a significantly higher poverty rate [73 per cent] than men [49 per cent].”

Ivanka Trump’s initiative

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum establishing the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative (W-GDP), which aims to assist 50 million women in developing nations to become full participants in economic life by 2025. The initiative is the brainchild of Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser.

The day before Trump signed the memo, Ms. Trump penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. “Over the last year, I have met with more than 200 partners — non-governmental organizations, private-sector companies and members of Congress,” she writes of her efforts to put together and build support for the women’s economic empowerment plan.

In the Feb. 6 op-ed, the senior presidential adviser makes the point that international peace and security are linked to the economic empowerment of women. “Research suggests that the more women are excluded from full participation in a country’s economy, the likelier it is that the country will be involved in conflict and respond to a threat with immediate violence,” she writes. “When women are free to thrive, they bring national stability, as well as more jobs and economic growth.”

Moreover, Ivanka Trump asserts that “expanding women’s economic participation has the potential to boost global economic output by an additional $12 trillion by 2025.”

By investing in the potential of women, Ms. Trump says that this “smart development” policy will benefit “families, communities and nations,” thereby unleashing the human potential of developing countries.

The Trump administration has allocated $50 million to the new fund.

Ivanka Trump’s initiative has been publicly endorsed by other influential women, including former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, as well as Christine Lagarde, the current managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The women’s economic empowerment initiative is also being applauded by ONE, a non-governmental organization dedicated to eliminating extreme poverty and inequality. “Over one billion women and girls don’t have access to a bank account, the loans required to grow their businesses, and the quality skills training and employment opportunities they need to be fully empowered,” Tom Hart, the North America executive director for The ONE Campaign, stated in a news release.

In addition, the representative of the ONE Campaign, which was co-founded by U2’s Bono, said that the Women’s Global Economic Empowerment Initiative “is a positive, bipartisan step towards reducing some of the inequalities that far too many women and girls face everywhere, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa

The dramatic rise of China has contributed greatly to the decline of extreme poverty in East Asia and the Pacific. “The countries of this region went from an average poverty rate of 62 per cent in 1990 to less than three per cent in 2015,” the World Bank reports.

Conversely, the situation in sub-Saharan Africa remains very bleak. The World Bank notes that economic progress in the region lags far behind that of Asia. In fact, 27 out of 28 of the world’s poorest countries are located in sub-Saharan Africa. And the Bretton Woods institution concludes that “extreme poverty is becoming more concentrated there because of the region’s slower rates of growth, problems caused by conflict and weak institutions, and a lack of success in channeling growth into poverty reduction.”

Sub-Saharan Africa remains mired in extreme poverty, at least in part, due to the region’s overreliance “on extractive industries that have weaker ties to the consumption and income levels of the poor, the prevalence of conflict, and their vulnerability to natural disasters such as droughts.”

“The stark contrast between Asia and Africa explains why it is getting harder to reduce poverty globally,” the World Bank report states. Extreme poverty in East Asia and the Pacific region fell to 2.3 per cent in 2015, which leads the World Bank to conclude that “the region has little more to give in terms of reducing the global rate.” And it’s a similar story in South Asia.

The World Bank concludes that the rise of extreme poverty in the sub-Saharan “makes it unlikely the World Bank’s 2030 [global poverty reduction] target will be met.”

Agriculture

“Agriculture is the mainstay of most African economies,” the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) website states. And the United Nations agency makes it clear that agriculture is vital to the continent’s future prosperity.

“The continent has enormous potential to eliminate poverty and food insecurity — and become a major player in regional and global food markets,” the FAO asserts. However, agriculture in Africa needs to become more productive — both in the use of land and labour.

The FAO is working to improve agriculture in the region. For example, it is working with farmers to boost crop production by improving water, land and soil fertility management and expanding irrigation.

In addition, the UN agency is helping develop value chains in the agricultural sector and “making them more inclusive and efficient.” And when it comes to addressing equality issues in the agricultural sector, the FAO claims to promote “decent employment for all, including women and young people.”

The African Women Agribusiness Network (AWAN), in co-operation with the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, ran a workshop last month in Abbis Abeba focusing on agribusiness in the Horn of Africa and East Africa. H.E. Josefa Sacko, the African Union commissioner for rural economy and agriculture, stated on Twitter that “AWAN is a network that brings together women entrepreneurs from Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda.” And the workshop was intended to help “strengthen [the] capacity of women in agribusiness and women in [the] agricultural value chain.”

In the final analysis, if the world is to meet the World Bank’s poverty reduction target, the community of nations must focus on helping boost agribusiness in sub-Saharan Africa while simultaneously working to ensure that women become full participants in economic life everywhere.

Follow Geoffrey P. Johnston on Twitter @GeoffyPJohnston.