Rethinking Poverty

Diana Krüger, co-founder of our partner organization MOTHERLAND, challenges conventional methods of measuring global poverty. In her analysis, she demonstrates how current definitions of extreme poverty obscure reality and lead to dangerous complacency. Diana opens up new perspectives on how we need to rethink development and progress – especially with regard to the African continent.

Too often, I argue with development experts that poverty, especially extreme poverty, is NOT declining. Paradoxically, in a world that generates trillions in wealth every year, the persistence of poverty is not just a problem; it’s a political and moral failure.

And yet, global institutions repeat a reassuring story: that poverty is declining, that progress is being made, and that international development is working. Central to this story is a single number: $2.15, the amount the World Bank currently uses to define “extreme poverty.” This threshold, celebrated in reports and global summits, is misleading. It allows the world to congratulate itself while billions remain locked in precarity. As Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo argues in Dead Aid, “The West has made a habit of congratulating itself for helping Africa, when in reality it has often perpetuated a cycle of dependence and dysfunction.” In many ways, the poverty line itself has become part of that dysfunction.

The $2.15 per day line, adjusted for purchasing power parity, is meant to represent the bare minimum required to survive. But survival is not the same as life. It is not health, nor education, nor dignity. According to data from the FAO, a minimally adequate diet now costs about $3.75 per day per person, and a healthy diet, closer to $6.90. That’s before housing, transportation, childcare, or medicine.

By this measure, someone earning $2.15 per day is considered “not poor.” This is a conceptual sleight of hand that Kenyan activist and technologist Ory Okolloh might describe as a problem of framing: “It’s not about the money,” she once said. “It’s about power, and who gets to define what matters.” When the metrics are shaped by institutions far from the lived realities of rural Kenya, northern Ghana, or the outskirts of Kinshasa, what passes as “progress” may look very different on the ground.

When we raise the poverty threshold to a more realistic $7.40/day, as proposed by development economist Jason Hickel, the picture changes drastically. Under this metric, over 4 billion people worldwide would be considered poor. Contrary to the popular narrative, the number of people living in poverty has not declined. It has grown.

And on the African continent, home to 1.2 billion people, with a median age of just 19 years — the implications are enormous. According to the World Bank’s data, over 460 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa currently live under the $2.15 threshold. But the vast majority of people earning just above that line remain deeply vulnerable, unable to save, invest, or shield themselves from climate shocks, inflation, or political instability.

Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe frames this as a deeper structural violence. In Necropolitics, he writes, “The ultimate expression of sovereignty resides in the power to dictate who may live and who must die.” Poverty, then, is not simply about low income, it is about lives deemed expendable or invisible in the current world order.

Africa’s population is projected to double by 2050, potentially reaching 2.5 billion. This could become either a demographic dividend or a humanitarian crisis, and the outcome depends heavily on how we understand and address poverty today.

Fred Swaniker, the Ghanaian founder of African Leadership Academy, argues that leadership, not just aid, will define the continent’s future. “We don’t lack resources or ideas,” he says. “What we need is a generation of ethical, entrepreneurial leaders who can build institutions that last.” His work centers not on charity, but on cultivating internal capacity, a far cry from the externally imposed development models of the past. The urgency here cannot be overstated. A continent with the youngest population in the world cannot afford frameworks that define poverty as the absence of two dollars. It must build economies and societies that value human potential, not just GDP per capita.

Across the continent, young people are innovating solutions in agriculture, renewable energy, education, and technology. But the path forward is not as simple as scaling up start-ups. For entrepreneurship to be a viable tool of poverty alleviation, it must be rooted in justice, access, and sustainability. It must operate within planetary boundaries, not replicate the extractive logic of industrial capitalism. Moreover, entrepreneurship cannot be the solution in the absence of systems: without public education, healthcare, infrastructure, and legal protections, the risk of failure remains high. As Ory Okolloh often warns, narratives that overly romanticize the “African entrepreneur” can obscure the structural obstacles that keep poverty in place.

This is where thinkers like Dambisa Moyo are particularly incisive. She critiques the entire aid architecture, not because she denies poverty, but because she believes aid often stabilizes poverty rather than dismantles it. Her call is not for less action, but for more meaningful engagement: investment, infrastructure, policy reform, trade, education. As she writes: “The key to sustainable development lies not in aid, but in creating the conditions for African economies to compete, innovate, and grow.” And as Jason Hickel reminds us, if we continue to define poverty in narrow, dollar-based terms, we will never be able to name, let alone change, the deeper systems that produce it. “The problem,” he writes, “is not that the poor don’t work hard. It’s that the system is built to ensure their labor benefits others more than themselves.”

Poverty is not an unfortunate accident of the human condition. It is the consequence of deliberate design, global power asymmetries, and outdated narratives. To address it honestly, we must abandon illusions of “victory” based on arbitrary numbers and commit to something far more demanding: a reimagination of development, value, and justice. In a continent as young, vibrant, and diverse as Africa, where languages, ideas, and energies collide, this reimagination is already underway.

The question is whether global institutions, funders, and governments are willing to listen, shift, and follow. Or whether they will continue to celebrate false progress, while a new generation fights for something far more real.