Economic advances around the world mean that while fewer people live in extreme poverty, almost half the world’s population — 3.4 billion people — still struggles to meet basic needs, the World Bank (WB) said.

Living on less than $3.20 per day reflects poverty lines in lower-middle-income countries, while $5.50 a day reflects standards in upper-middle-income countries, the World Bank said in its biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report, “Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle.”
The World Bank remains committed to achieving the goal of ending extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, by 2030. The share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty fell to 10 percent in 2015, but the pace of extreme poverty reduction has slowed, the Bank warned on Sept. 19.

However, given that economic growth means that a much greater proportion of the world’s poor now live in wealthier countries, additional poverty lines and a broader understanding of poverty are crucial to fully fighting it, the report says.
“Ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity are our goals, and we remain committed to them,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. “At the same time, we can take a broader view of poverty at different levels and dimensions around the world. This view reveals that poverty is more widespread and entrenched, underlining the importance of investing in people.”

While rates of extreme poverty have declined substantially, falling from 36 per cent in 1990, the report’s expanded examination of the nature of poverty demonstrates the magnitude of the challenge in eradicating it. Over 1.9 billion people, or 26.2 per cent of the world’s population, were living on less than $3.20 per day in 2015. Close to 46 per cent of the world’s population was living on less than $5.50 a day.

The report also goes beyond monetary measures of poverty to understand how access to adequate water and sanitation, education, or electricity affect a family’s well-being. And since the burdens of poverty often fall most heavily on women and children, the report analyzes how poverty can vary within a household.

The report finds that the incomes of the poorest 40 percent grew in 70 of the 91 economies monitored. In more than half of the economies, their incomes grew faster than the average, meaning they were getting a bigger share of the economic pie. However, progress in sharing prosperity lagged in some regions of the world. The report also warns that data needed to assess shared prosperity is weakest in the very countries that most need it to improve. Only one in four low-income countries and four of the 35 recognized fragile and conflict-affected states have data on shared prosperity data over time.
The new measures allow the World Bank to better monitor poverty in all countries, in multiple aspects of life, and for all individuals in every household.
“Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle” is being released on End Poverty Day and will be accompanied by a launch event to be webcast on World Bank Live at 12:30 p.m. EDT (4:30 p.m. UTC/GMT).
REGIONAL SNAPSHOTS

Sub-Saharan Africa: A third of the countries in the region experienced negative income growth for the bottom 40 per cent of their populations. The region with the largest number of extreme poor, Africa saw its population nearly double between 1990 and 2015, with one of the largest increases in population being for those living on less than $3.20 and more than $1.90. The poor suffered from multiple deprivations such as low consumption levels and lack of access to education and basic infrastructure services.

East Asia and Pacific: The region was one of the best performers in shared prosperity: The incomes of the poorest 40 per cent of the population grew on average 4.7 per cent between 2010 and 2015. East Asia not only had the largest reductions in extreme poverty, but also in the proportion of people living on less than $3.20 and $5.50 per day. While extreme poverty is very low, the region saw a higher percentage of people lacking access to sanitation.
Europe and Central Asia: Many countries in the region suffered setbacks in the growth of incomes of its bottom 40. On the other hand, several economies whose bottom 40 suffered large declines because of the financial and the debt crises were recovering. Among developing regions, Europe and Central Asia had the lowest percentage of people living under the $3.20 and $5.50 poverty lines. However, in the share of people lacking schooling enrollment, it performs less well than either East Asia and Pacific or Latin America and the Caribbean.
Latin America and the Caribbean: The region saw less shared prosperity from 2010 to 2015 than in previous years as its economies were impacted by a slowdown in global commodity prices. The region had almost 11 per cent living on less than $3.20 a day and over 26 per cent on less than $5.50 a day in 2015. Poverty in non-monetary dimensions such as lack of access to drinking water, adequate sanitation or electricity was much less associated with monetary aspects.
Middle East and North Africa: Even though the region saw an increase in the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day, levels of extreme poverty remained low. However, the region had more people living on less than $5.50 per day in 2015 than in 1990. Additionally, almost one in seven people lacks adequate sanitation.
South Asia: the region saw impressive growth of the incomes of its bottom 40 between 2010 and 2015. Despite a 35-percentage point decline in extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015, the region registered only an 8 per cent decrease in people living on less than $3.20 a day, and over 80 percent of the region still lived below $5.50 per day in 2015. Also, the number of people in the region living in households without access to electricity or adequate sanitation was far greater than those living in monetary poverty.

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For over the past year, Dfcu bank has received criticism for being reluctant with data security after leakage of vital information like bank statements of their top bosses to the public.

Accordingly, Dfcu bank has come out and restricted its employees from assessing crucial information especially those in the Information Technology (IT) section as a way of preventing information from being leaked to the public.

At some point, some shareholders threatened to withdraw their shares from the bank after the leakage of crucial bank statements and information to several online publications and the public.
This rubbishes claims by Dfcu Bank when they recently came out saying some online media outlets were spreading malicious information concerning its business operations. The local media have not been telling lies about the Crane Bank-Dfcu saga because they have evidence.

This all began from the controversial purchase of Crane bank in January 2017. Bank of Uganda (BOU) liquidated Crane Bank in 2016 and controversially sold it in January 2017 to Dfcu Bank but the controversial transaction continues to haunt both of the top managers at BoU and Dfcu Bank.
Early this month, Eagle Online reported that a top boss at Dfcu bank has $40 million on his account Bank of Africa as showed by the statement of transaction.
The Bank of Uganda Consumer Protection Guidelines of 2011 compel financial institutions inclusive of commercial banks to safeguard the information of customers’ accounts.

It states; “A financial institution shall not disclose any information about the consumer includes information relating to the consumer’s account and any information about the relationship between the financial services provider and the consumer.

It is mandatory for banks to protect personal and banking-related information, but there are situations in which it can release this information for example when the law compels it to.

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The Mo Ibrahim Foundation (MIF) will launch of the 12th annual Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) on Monday October 29, 2018, when the results and analysis will be shared with the public at mo.ibrahim.foundation.

To mark the launch, Dr Mo Ibrahim will participate in a Facebook Live event to discuss this year’s striking results and the trends measuring Africa’s public governance progress.

Mo will be joined by a panel of African experts representing the continent’s growing next generation voices, Yvonne Apea Mensah from Ghana and Nasi Rwigema from South Africa, who will provide their own opinions of this year’s Index findings. The panel will also respond to questions in real time from online users.

Following the launch, MIF, in partnership with the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), will host a high-level discussion on the findings on November 2, in Pretoria, South Africa.

Global Launch of the 2018 IIAG

The IIAG is an unmatched resource providing the world’s most extensive analysis of the quality of governance in African countries. With the Index, MIF seeks to enable governments, citizens, business, academia, policy makers and analysts to use its findings as a tool to assess accurately the delivery of public goods and services and drive conversations about governance in Africa. As such, the data are made freely available each year via the IIAG Data Portal (iiag.online).

The 2018 IIAG launch will take place online during a 30-minute Facebook Live event with Mo and two African next generation voices, taking the discussion directly to the public to encourage dialogue across social media using the hashtags #IIAG and #AskMIF.

With ten years of data to draw from, the 2018 IIAG is uniquely positioned to measure trends in governance, providing in-depth analysis on how the quality of governance has changed over the past five years (2013-2017) within the context of the last decade (2008-2017), and what has or could be key to Africa’s transformation.

In every iteration, MIF – assisted by the IIAG’s Advisory Council – looks at improving the structure, components and methodology of the IIAG. Due to this annual revision, every year MIF recalculates all scores in the Index.

Previous iterations of the IIAG covered data from 2000 onwards. The 2018 IIAG is for the first time providing comparable governance data for the last decade only, to strengthen the robustness of the findings.

For the first time, an assessment of youth inclusion is part of the IIAG. Through the indicator Promotion of Socio-economic Integration of Youth (provided by Global Integrity), the Index assesses whether there is a government policy/strategy to increase the socio-economic integration of youth.

This year’s IIAG will have the added focus of analysing the data through thematic frameworks and broader themes including: economic opportunity for Africa’s citizens, the demographic dividend, transparency and accountability.

The ten-year time series includes the most recent governance performances, raising the bar in areas such as Health, where countries should benchmark themselves to more current standards.

The IIAG contains analysis across 102 indicators from 35 independent African and global data institutions to cover all 54 African countries in the areas of Safety & Rule of Law, Participation & Human Rights, Sustainable Economic Opportunity and Human Development

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