Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty Democracy
of Mauritania, and the ruling National Congress Party (led by President Omar El
Bashir) and the opposition New National Congress of Sudan (led by the Islamic
clerk, Hassan Al-Turabi) in Sudan.
3.1.2 The socio-economic context
Apart from the glitter of the capital cities and a few urban centres, the general socioeconomic
context in Africa can be characterized as one of underdevelopment and
poverty. Africa is the poorest region in the world.
Over the last 30 years, on average, its people have seen virtually no increase in their
incomes. Over the last decade Sub-Saharan African countries have seen average
growth rates above 4 per cent, including ten with rates above 5 per cent and three
with rates above 7 per cent. There are examples of strong performers from across
the region, such as Mozambique in the south, Benin in the west, and Uganda in the
east. However, despite these positive results, there is extensive evidence that poverty
is increasing. For example, Jeffrey Sachs, using the World Bank standard income
of 1 US dollar (USD) per day per person, measured in purchasing power parity, to
determine the numbers of extreme poor, and income between 1 USD per day and
2 USD per day to measure moderate poverty, has illustrated that poverty is rampant
in Africa (Sachs 2005). The overwhelming share of the world’s extreme poor—93 per
cent in 2001—live in three regions—East Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Since 1981 the numbers of the extremely poor have risen in Sub-Saharan Africa, but
have fallen in East Asia and South Asia. Almost half of Africa’s population is deemed
to live in extreme poverty, and that proportion has risen slightly over the period. It
is rising in Africa both in absolute terms and as a share of the population, while it
is falling both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the population in the Asian
regions.
Africa also endures highly unequal distribution of income, which significantly reduces
the positive impact of growth on poverty. Inequality is particularly high in Lesotho,
Botswana, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, Swaziland and South Africa.
It is most severe in Namibia, which has one of the highest levels of inequality in the
world. Relatively equal distributions of income in Ghana and Uganda have meant
that growth in these countries has been linked more strongly to poverty reduction.
Over the last decade the Human Development Index (HDI) has been rising across all
the developing regions, although at variable rates—and with the obvious exception
of Sub-Saharan Africa. Amid the overall progress, however, many countries have
suffered unprecedented reversals. Thirteen African countries (the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Botswana, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Congo,