World’s Soil Resources

Poverty: General poverty of the farming population and the low potential of the farming systems
characteristic of SSA pose considerable challenges to sustainable agricultural growth and poverty reduction.
Poverty is particularly prevalent in the pastoral/agro-pastoral, highland perennial and forest based farming
systems which constitute one-third of the total SSA production systems (FAO and World Bank, 2001). From
Figure 9.4 it is clear that SSA has many countries where a large percentage of the population is living below
the poverty line.
Figure 9.3: The fertility rate (the number of children a woman is expected to bear during her lifetime) for 1970 and 2005. Source:
Fooddesert.org
Climate Change: Climate change is predicted to affect SSA agro-ecosystems on a significant scale in the
coming decades. The continent has a long history of rainfall fluctuations of varying lengths and intensities.
Severe droughts affected East and West Africa alike during the 1910s. Drought episodes were generally followed
by increasing rainfall levels, but negative trends were observed again from the 1950 onwards, culminating in
the droughts of the early 1970s and mid -1 980s. These droughts had an impact on the susceptibility of soils to
erosion.
Legend
Population (%)
3 - 14
14 - 26
26 - 37
37 - 48
48 - 57
57 - 66
66 - 75
75 - 84
Figure 9.4 Percentage of population living below the poverty line. Source: CIA World Factbook, 2012.
Status of the World’s Soil Resources | Main Report Regional Assessment of Soil Changes
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in Africa South of the Sahara