More than 8.4 million Kenyans are living in extreme poverty levels according to the World Poverty Clock. The real time clock showed 8, 494, 890 Kenyans had slipped into the extreme poverty category as at Thursday, February 14.
According to the World Poverty Clock, created by Vienna-based World Data, 8.4 million people languishing in extreme poverty is against the country’s population of over 49.3 million recorded by Thursday, February 14.
This statistic therefore informs that over 17.2% of Kenyans are living in poverty. The percentage is high compared to the world’s representation where 8% of the population is living in dire poverty. Out of over 7 billion people in the world at least 589 million people find themselves in the extreme poverty category.
Despite Kenya’s target escape rate of 1.7 people per minute from the category only 0.6 was achievable thus less than a person was getting out of extreme poverty bracket in a minute. The population living in extreme poverty in Kenya however reduced from 18.4% in 2018 to 17.2% in 2019.
This finding however depicts a slight improvement from the situation in 2018. In February 2018, the number of people living in extreme poverty was slightly above 8.7 million out of a population of 47.7 million people. This meant that 18.4% of Kenya’s population was living in poverty exactly one year ago.
According to the World Poverty Clock, less than 3% of Nairobi county’s population fell in the extreme poverty category. In Garissa, 159,000 people out of 483,000 were living in extreme poverty which translates to 33% of the population. In Kiambu county 137, 760 people were living in extreme poverty out of the total population of 2.02 million translating to 6.8% of the population. In Kisumu county, 172,000 people out of over 1.2 million fell in the extreme poverty category which is equivalent to 14% of the population.
