When going through Real Inc.'s preferred charities, it seems a disproportionate amount of them are active only in Africa. On a dart board, the bull's eye is also disproportionate to the rest of the board. This article will shed a little light on a place that needs it most.

Africa is the most neglected, and poorest continent on the planet. Out of the 28 poorest countries in the world, 27 are in Africa.¹

Within Africa itself, poverty is primarily localized in Sub-Saharan Africa. 16% of all the people in the world live in Sub-Saharan Africa, yet those 16% are 67% of all the people in the world living in extreme poverty.²

Similarly, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest percentage of children living in extreme poverty. It's home to about 23% of all the children in the world, yet those 23% are 75% of all the children in the world living in extreme poverty (over 312 million children).³

In 2014, the percentage of children living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is around 52%. In 2024, ten years later, that percentage hasn't changed.⁴

While the world’s population has increased by two billion people, the absolute number of people living in poverty has decreased, except in Sub-Saharan Africa.⁵

Out of the ten most unequal countries in the world, seven are in Sub-Saharan Africa.⁶

The effects of this poverty are of course worse than the poverty itself. The deadliest diseases in the world are most common in Sub-Saharan Africa.⁷ It also accounts for 80% of the global population without access to electricity.⁸ Overall, over 565 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa experience multidimensional poverty, suffering simultaneous deprivations in the areas of health, basic nutrition, sanitation, clean water, schooling, and more.⁹

An unfortunate ordeal that fortune could change.

Sources
1. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/figure-of-the-week-understanding-poverty-in-africa/ 
2. https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/one-in-six-people-live-in-sub-saharan-africa-but-it-accounts-for-two-thirds-of-global-extreme-poverty 
3. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/publication/child-poverty-global-regional-and-select-national-trends
4. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/publication/child-poverty-global-regional-and-select-national-trends
5. https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/september-2025-global-poverty-update-from-the-world-bank--new-da 
6. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/2ea96ab4-39c1-4ece-8dd0-7fdc4afcf48b/content
7. https://www.who.int/teams/global-tuberculosis-programme/tb-reports ; https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet ; https://www.who.int/teams/global-malaria-programme/reports/world-malaria-report-2023 
8. https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2025-12/SEforALL%20SDG7_TRACKING_2025-data_analysis.pdf
9. https://hdr.undp.org/system/files/documents/global-report-document/mpireport2025en.pdf