About 1.4 billion
people still live in abject poverty despite the numerous national and global
efforts during the past years on the first target of the Millennium Development
Goals, which aims at reducing extreme poverty by one-half by the year 2015, country
representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in The Gambia said
According to Dr Babagana
Ahmadu as at 2011, the poorest 40 per cent of the world's population accounted
for five per cent of total global income while the richest 20 per cent
accounted for three-quarters of the world's income.
The FAO country rep
was speaking on Thursday at the end of a three-day workshop marking the
official launching of the International Fund for Agricultural Development-funded
project - National Agricultural Land and Water Management Development.
Furthermore, he
said, rural areas account for three in every four people living on less than
US$1 a day and similar share of the world population suffering from
malnutrition.
He emphasised the
need for efforts to be accelerated in the poverty reduction strides, pointing
out that poverty remains a predominantly rural problem, as the majority of the
world's poor are located in rural areas.
It is estimated
that 76 per cent of the developing world's poor live in rural areas.
According to Dr
Ahmadu, disparities between rural and urban areas are on the rise, particularly
in many developing and transitional countries.
Globally, rural
people and rural places tend to be disadvantaged relative to their urban
counterparts, whilst poverty rates increase as rural areas become more remote.
People living in
the rural areas tend to have less access to social services, exacerbating the
effects of rural poverty.
