In Africa, 'Poverty Has a Female Face'

The global economic crisis will drastically reduce African women’s individual incomes as well as the budgets they manage on behalf of their households, with particularly damaging consequences for girls, said Obiageli Ezekwesili, World Bank Vice President for the Africa Region, at a recent conference on the impact of the global economic crisis on women in Africa.

“Poverty has a female face and the global economic downturn will have a significant impact on women as more of them lose jobs and are forced to manage shrinking household incomes,” Ezekwesili said May 8 at the “Women and the Changing Global Outlook” conference organized by the British Embassy in Washington, and the National Geographic Society.

“The face of poverty is female,” she said, sketching the portrait of the typical poor African youth.

“She is 18.5 years old. She lives in a rural area. She has dropped out of school. She is single, but is about to be married or be given in marriage to a man approximately twice her age. She will be the mother of six or seven kids in another 20 years,” said Ezekwesili, citing the findings of the latest edition of the annual World Bank publication, Africa Development Indicators (ADI).