Poverty in Tanzania
Tanzania has a current population of 55.57 million people. Current statistics form the World Bank show that in 2011, 49.1% of Tanzanians lived below $1.90 USD per day. This figure is an improvement over 2007’s report indicating a poverty rate of 55.1%. Tanzania has seen annual GDP gains of 7% since 2010 and this economic growth is attributed to this positive trends for poverty alleviation in Tanzania.
Songwe Region
The local government areas now comprising Songwe Region reported a combined population of 998,862 in the 2012 census, 46 percent of whom were under 15 years old. The same areas reported a population of 723,480 in the 2002 Tanzanian census, yielding an annual population growth rate of 3.2 percent between 2002 and 2012. In 2017 the population of the region was projected at 1,173,667 inhabitants. In 2012, 211,537 people or 21.2 percent of the region's population lived in urban areas, an increase of 250.4 percent over the urban population of 60,377 recorded in 2002. Major ethnic groups in the region include the Nyiha, Nyamwanga, Ndali, Bungu and Lambya.