Income Inequality In Sub-Saharan Africa

Throughout the course of modern history, many academics and policymakers have all proposed various methods to eradicate poverty. Because each of these suggestions is unique, not all of them agree on a common approach to tackle poverty or hold the same views on the subject. For example, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University insists that poverty in impoverished nations can be eradicated by investing foreign aid in development and technology in order to stimulate growth and allow people to exit the vicious poverty trap (Scientific American, 2005). On the other hand, Dr. William Easterly of New York University argues that such aid does not in any way provide for sustainable growth and is in fact a small piece of a much larger picture in which the rights of people afflicted with poverty are not respected (The Wall Street Journal, 2014). However, despite many conflicting views, the focus of a large majority of these proposals and a recurring theme is: stimulating human
Half of these people, living in Sub-Saharan Africa, survive on below $2.00 a day. On the other hand, the income inequality that arrived with the advent of the industrial revolution has been steadily increasing in most developing and developed nations (UN, 2016). While it is tempting to think that the two completely correlate with each other, Dr. Sachs argues otherwise. Poverty in places like Sub-Saharan Africa is, he says, not because of rising income inequality or globalization for that matter, but because globalization has largely bypassed the region hardly influencing it or stimulating growth (Scientific American, 2016). It is at this stage that investments towards development enter the