China offers great lessons to Africa on Poverty Alleviation

This year, China will win the war against extreme poverty, leading to building a moderately prosperous society, and a crucial step towards realizing the Chinese Dream. In just a period of 7 years from 2012 to the end of last year 2019, extreme poverty in China fell from 98.99million to a mere 5.51million! By the end of 2020, extreme poverty will be history in China with a population of 1.4 billion people.

At Africa China Review, we have previously mentioned that in the 1960s, some African countries like Zambia, were far better off economically than China. At that time, Zambia had a GDP per capita of $232, while China had a mere $90! Sixty years later, Zambia’s GDP per capita is a mere $1,540, uncomparable to China which is today the send largest economy in the world! The question one may ask is what went wrong with the economies of African countries to stagnate or grow negatively for decades.

Lack of effective leadership and rampant corruption in Africa have been largely responsible for the poor economic performance. Statistics indicate that one in three Africans, that is 442 million people live below the global poverty line representing more than 70 percent of the world’s poorest people.

However, there is hope that Africa is peaking slowly in the war against poverty and China can be a good example to learn from in many aspects. Projections from World data Lab, indicate that since the start of the SDGs- more African countries are moving out of extreme poverty than are falling below the poverty line with an estimated 367 people lifted out of poverty per day. Although this pace is slow, there is hope that by the end of this year, the rate is expected to increase to 3,000 people per day, and causing a one million-person reduction in total Africa Poverty in 2020.

China enacted pro-people policies like moving poor communities from highlands and less productive areas and settling them in urban areas with good housing and other social amenities. At all levels of local administration there are officers in charge of poverty alleviation, who follow up on the causes of poverty in the communities and propose ways to overcome them. Every local administrative level is accountable as far as poverty alleviation is concerned. One of the problems for African countries is that good sounding pro-people policies may be developed but the implementation fails to take off. Secondly, rampant corruption has seen large amounts of money meant to fight poverty ending up in pockets of the very leaders who are supposed to implement the poverty alleviation project.

China has tackled corruption in unprecedented ways. President Xi Jinping personally has been at the forefront of eradicating corruption at all levels in China. Xi is credited for his resolve to bring to account the big and small fish, in Chinese case known as the “tigers and flies”. Thousands of people have been indicated over corruption charges and this has set a warning to the leaders and the ordinary people, that corruption has no place in modern China. This resolve by the Chinese top leadership of zero tolerance to corruption, is what African leaders have to emulate for the benefit of the people and the country.

Millions of dollars have been siphoned from African economies and most of this money ends in off shore accounts in foreign countries. In 2018, the executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UECA) Mr. Vera Songwe, pointed out that the African continent lost $148 billion annually to corruption. Curbing corruption should be top priority for African countries for economic growth and prosperity.
Africa is not a poor continent; it is endowed with many natural resources that need to be transparently exploited and utilized for the benefit of the African people. A report by campaign groups released in 2017 titled, “Africa is rich, but we steal its wealth”, the report estimates that $29bn a year is being lost from Africa through illegal logging, fishing and trade in wildlife.
Africa is not destined to be a poor continent. With effective leadership, pro-people policies put into action, and zero tolerance on corruption, Africa can make a difference and break the shackles of poverty just the way China has managed to win the war against extreme poverty.

Africa China Review Editorial
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