Migrations, Posts

Wealthier but poor.

July 23, 2018
We have analysed some data so far and they are quite worrying: in next decades, a great part of African population will risk not having a job.
We wish we were completely wrong – we will be really glad we were – but the trend seems to lead to a huge employment lack and it should be useful to reason out this in a more strategical way, avoiding tacticism, a palliative to reassure public opinion. As we have already said, Africa’s demographic situation will undergo an increase and, therefore, unemployed people in Africa will exponentially and dramatically increase.
We consequently wonder what these people will do, when forced to live an uncertain life: WILL THEY CHOOSE TO STAY IN THEIR COUNTRIES, FIGHTING FOR A JOB? OR WILL THEY BE ATTRACTED BY THE GLOBALIZATION’S CALL AND TRY TO FIND A BETTER FUTURE FAR FROM HOME? WILL THEY MIGRATE, WITHIN AFRICA OR ABROAD?
It’s not simple to answer these questions, but we could just start from the context and some real elements; these are not very complete, but they try to clarify the conditions at the basis of this apparently unstoppable flow of people.
Let’s start from wealth’s and poverty’s distributions in the world.
“Global Wealth Report”, published every year thanks to Credit Suisse’s financial support, shows some scaring predictions: Africa is worth only 1% of the world’s wealth. In Africa, an average citizen earns about 1,800 dollars a year, against 50,000 dollars earned by a USA average citizen or 35,000/40,000 dollars of a European average citizen. Only 6% of African inhabitants earn enough to almost reach 10,000 dollars, while 94% of people doesn’t go beyond this threshold. In all the continent, only 136 adults can be considered billionaires, against the 14,000 American billionaires.
The situation is not better when observing the percentages of poorest countries, as Credit Suisse Global Wealth graph shows us: Africa is again the protagonist, with Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria ranking first as the poorest ones.
But the problem goes beyond African borders: in the world inequalities have not disappeared. At all.
World’s wealth is still in the hands of few people: 33 million adults – as Credit Suisse’s report involves only working-age people –, that is 0.7% of world’s population, manage 45% of world’s wealth.

“Global Wealth Pyramid” shows different levels of distribution, in proportion: just below the narrowest and wealthier band there is a second group of 391 million adults owning 40% of the wealth. Below them, a third group of about 1 billion adults sharing 11.6% of the wealth. The wider band, that is 3.5 billion adults at the pyramid’s basis, gets what remains: 2.7% of the wealth, that is nothing. Most of them are Africans.
It seems like Africa is keeping on playing a marginal role in wealth’s distribution and even if it could soon improve with a new political class, trying to redeem itself from corruption and improving some productive sectors, it would always be a poor continent.
There will obviously be some wealth niches and the new middle class wont’ be ignored, but we are talking about some dozens million people representing insignificant processes if compared with demographic curve and automation trends.

You Might Also Like