African Water Development Report 2006 - United Nations Economic ...

WATER FOR MEETING BASIC NEEDSIn recent decades, Africa has been the world’sworst performing region in terms of poverty reduction(Ravallion and Chen, 2000). From 1987to 1998 poverty incidence remained at 46 percent, while the number of poor people increasedfrom 217 million to 290 million. Per capita incomein sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) fell by 20 percent from the peak period of 1974 to the bottomperiod of 1994 (World Bank, 2002). The 1990ssaw some recovery in the form of improved macroeconomicmanagement, growth and povertyreduction in selected countries in sub-SaharanAfrica (Christiaensen, Demery, and Paternostro,2002), and there was a modest 4 per cent increasein per capita income from 1994 to 2000. Thequestion that however remains is whether Africaneconomies can achieve the goals of povertyreduction and improvements in human developmentset out in the Poverty Reduction StrategyPapers (PRSPs) and the MDGs. Distribution ofthe annual Gross Domestic Product among varioussectors of the national economy is illustratedin figure 5.687