The World Bank has asked Nigeria and other developing nations across the globe to muster the political will to end extreme poverty by the year 2030.

The Development Committee of the bank, which rose from its meeting on Saturday, called for the replenishment of the International Development Association Fund, the World Bank’s Fund for the poorest.

The committee endorsed the World Bank Group’s goal to end extreme poverty within a generation as ambitious, saying that this endeavor by the bank was a historic opportunity to make a difference.

The committee equally confirmed the group’s vision to promote shared prosperity and added the goals must be achieved without jeopardising the environment, magnifying economic debt or excluding vulnerable people.

World Bank Group President Jim Kim, who pushed this twin-pronged approach, welcomed the committee’s support.

Kim said, “I have no doubt that the world can end extreme poverty within a generation. But it’s not a given and we cannot do it alone. It requires focus, innovation and commitments from everyone. This endorsement is an important step. If we succeed, together, we would have accomplished a historic milestone.”

The 25-member committee, which meets twice a year during the World Bank/IMF spring and annual meetings, said in its communiqué that reducing the percentage of people living on less than $1.25 a day to three per cent by 2030 would require strong growth across the developing world, and translation of growth into poverty reduction to an extent not seen before in many low income countries.

It would also require overcoming institutional and governance challenges, and investing in infrastructure and in agricultural productivity, the committee said.

The committee also called on the bank to pay special attention to countries and regions with the highest incidence of poverty and to fragile and conflict-affected situations, as well as to the particular challenges facing small states.

A new analysis of extreme poverty released by the World Bank showed that there were still 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty (21 per cent of the developing world population in 2010).

And despite the recent impressive progress, Sub-Saharan Africa still accounted for more than one-third of the world’s extreme poor, it stated.

The communiqué also stressed that the goal of shared prosperity — fostering income growth of the bottom 40 per cent of the population in every country – would not be achieved without addressing inequality.

Source: Punch (by Everest Amaefule)