The World Bank Group has listed Ethiopia among the 39 countries where extreme poverty is worsening.
In a study released over the weekend, the World Bank linked the worsening poverty situation, including “intensifying extreme hunger”, to conflict and instability.
The study indicated that currently 421 million people in the countries are struggling on less than $3 a day and the number could increase to 435 million in five years from now. “The extreme poverty rate in these countries is indicated to be 40 percent,” the study noted.
The World Bank report quoted Intermit Gill, one of its chief economists, as saying ““For the last three years, the world’s attention has been on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and this focus has now intensified.” said which focused on the years after 2020,
Ethiopia has been plunged into devastating conflict since the current government took power in 2018 mainly in major regional states including in Tigray and Amhara regions.
In November 2020, a conflict between his government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) which lasted for two years, is believed to have claimed as many as 1 million lives mainly from three regional states of the country : Afar, Amhara and Tigray.
The economic toll of the war is not less devastating to the country. Millions have been displaced, many of them still in the IDPs camps, and reduced to absolute poverty. The economic damage caused to the country is reported to be in the neighborhood of trillion birr.
Ongoing conflict in Amhara region between rebel groups also known as Fano who claim they are fighting to reverse existential threat to the Amhara people.
MG/abj/APA