Inequality vs Economic Growth in Africa. Part 1

Social inequality is something we, unfortunately, experience every day in many various situations and aspects. There are countless reports done on the topic of discrimination on the basis of sex, skin color, religious affiliation, political affiliation, etc. What gets overlooked though, are the effects of inequalities. Quite obviously – there are apparent social and political effects of the inequalities such as women are seen as home maids all over the world, people of color are profiled by law enforcement in the US, and so on. We are all aware of them. I don’t believe anything that I have just mentioned is new to any well-informed person. But what is not widely known, is that there are economic results of the inequalities. Ten of the nineteen of the countries with the highest level of income inequality (measured by the GINI coefficient), can be found in Africa (sic!) - South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Central African Republic, Comoros, Zambia, and Lesotho are merely some of them (Ghandi)(UNDP Launches Study on Income Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa). That’s why, when speaking about income disparities we have to take a look first at the home of mankind – Africa.

I would like to start with the topic of gender inequality as it is a widely occurring phenomenon seen both in the African countries but in more developed countries as well. It is safe to say – it concerns us all. Before we start, though it is absolutely vital to remember that “[i]n calculating survey-based income inequality indicators, it is often assumed that all incomes are shared equally within households ” (Hakura et al 8). As we can easily tell, not even in the countries of the developed world it happens all the time. Because of that assumption, the situation of women in Africa may be or rather for sure is even worse than various reports show. We have to base our judgments and analyses on the most accurate data source we can find and according to the United Nations Development Programme, “[g]ender inequality is costing sub-Saharan Africa on average $US95 billion a year”(UNDP). What is even more important, is that the number was even higher in 2014. It was $105 billion which accounted for 6% of the regions GDP (UNDP). It gets even worse than that though. One might think, that missing out on around $95 billion in a year would be bad enough, but no. As the UNDP estimated, “1 percent increase in gender inequality reduces a country’s human development index by 0.75 percent. Furthermore, it is proven, that gender inequality “ has been shown to result in large GDP losses across countries of all income levels” (Hakura et al. 9). Moreover, in the long run, a greater presence of women in the legislative bodies may effect in greater expenditure on healthcare and education, thus improving economic prospects of a country in the long run (Hakura et al. 9). Perhaps though, some African countries ought to start from the very beginning. Eight countries in Sub-Saharan Africa still need to remove some basic limitations for women, such as, but not limited to not having the possibility to open up a new banking account. Even more – in some countries, women need to have their husband’s consent to start a new job (Sayeh). How many Marie Curies have we lost? Would I be typing this up on a computer if the next African Ada Lovelace would not get a permission from her husband to work? For all of the skeptics, Namibia in the past have had restrictions as mentioned above, and after their removal, the country with the capital in Windhoek (Sayeh).