Sub-Saharan Africa's turnaround over the past couple of decades has been dramatic. After many years in decline, the continent's economy picked up in the mid-1990s.

Poverty has been declining in Sub-Saharan Africa, but millions are still poor or vulnerable. To address this ongoing and complex problem, all countries in the region have now deployed social safety net programs as part of their core development plans.

This report begins by evaluating Africa’s data landscape to monitor poverty. It maps out and assesses in detail the availability and quality of the data needed to track monetary poverty (expenditures, prices, GDP) and also reflects on the governance and political processes that underpin the current situation.

Africa’s strong economic growth has contributed to improving people’s health and education in the past 20 years as well as major reductions in poverty in several countries, but a rapid rise in population has led to increases in the overall number of extreme poor, the World Bank Group said in a comprehensive report on poverty in the region.

According to this new World Bank report on "state of the poor" the extreme poverty has fallen across the developing world in the last three decades, but the pace was considerably slower in LICs and poverty for middle and high income countries (including India and China) fell by more than a half since 1981.