Zimbabweans Living On US$0.96/Day

Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. — Proverbs 14:31, NIV

In Africa, Ethiopia is on track to meet the United Nations’ SDG of ending extreme poverty by 2030. Outside the top ten, only Ghana and Mauritania are also on track with the SDG target.

Latest data from Zimstat shows that the average Zimbabwean are living on US 96 cents a day or ZWL$14.60 as of September up 18.18% from ZWL$12.78 or US$1.174 in August. The bad news is that more than 2 million people still live in extreme poverty, and twice that many live on less than $2 a day. The movement is in line with the September monthly inflation figures of 17.7% but means that Zimbabwe is now in extreme poverty as consumption is now below the World’s Bank standard measure of US$1.25 a day.

Sub-Saharan Africa is still by far the world’s poorest region. Though the percentage of extremely poor people there has dropped, population increases mean that the number of extremely poor people has risen in recent years, according to the World Bank. There are about 414 million extremely poor Africans today, compared with 205 million three decades ago.

The Poverty Datum Line for Zimbabwe stood at $438.32 per person in September 2019. This means that an individual required that much to purchase both non-food and food items as at September 2019 in order not to be deemed poor. This represents an increase of 20% when compared to the August 2019 figure of $365.40. The PDL for an average of five persons stood at $2,191.62 in September 2019. This represents an increase of 20% when compared to the August 2019 figure of $1,826.99.

Zimbabwe now has an inflationary economy due to a number of issues including but not limited to the scarcity of foreign currency, fuel, electricity, the collapse of the local industry and drought.