Is Inequality in Africa Rising?

Inequality is typically measured at the country-level. “Poverty in a Rising Africa,” the latest World Bank Group Africa poverty report, does not find a systematic increase in inequality - the number of countries showing an increase of within-country inequality is the same as the number of countries showing a decrease. As the report notes, these findings come with the important caveat that the survey instruments used to measure household consumption expenditure are not good at capturing the very rich.

This also leave the question whether the conclusions would change when we ignore national boundaries and look at inequality among all African citizens instead. Doing so puts the disparities that exist within African countries into context with the disparities that exist within the region as a whole, akin to the interpersonal global income distribution. Such a perspective on inequality comes naturally to an international organization as the World Bank.