Reducing Poverty in Africa: Realistic Targets for the Post-2015 MDGs and Agenda 2063

African Futures Paper No 10 (using 2005 as the currency reference year). Institute for Security Studies and Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. Pretoria, South Africa, and Denver, CO, USA.

The eradication of extreme poverty is a key component of the post-2015 MDG process and the African Union’s Agenda 2063. This paper uses the International Futures forecasting system to explore that goal, and finds that even with aggressive interventions, many African states are unlikely to make the target by 2030. In addition to the use of country-level targets, this paper argues in favour of a goal that would see Africa as a whole reducing extreme poverty to below 20% by 2030 using 2005 as the currency reference year (15% using 2011 purchasing power parity), and to below 3% by 2063.