Despite Nigeria’s wealth of natural resources, the World Bank Group has projected that more Nigerians will fall into poverty by 2027. This forecast is part of the World Bank’s Africa’s Pulse report, unveiled during the ongoing Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington, D.C. The report highlights that sub-Saharan Africa holds the world’s highest rate of extreme poverty, with the majority of the poor concentrated in just a few nations. According to the Bretton Woods institution, an estimated 80 percent of the world’s 695 million people living in extreme poverty in 2024 were in sub-Saharan Africa, compared to 8 percent in South Asia, 2 percent in East Asia and the Pacific, 5 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 3 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. “Within Sub-Saharan Africa, half of the 560 million extreme poor in 2024 resided in four countries,” the report highlighted. Here’s a rephrased version of the passage: --- The report emphasized that poverty is projected to rise by 3.6 percentage points between 2022 and 2027 in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo—two resource-rich yet fragile nations. “Notably, resource-rich and fragile countries, such as Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are the only group in the region where poverty rates are expected to climb, with an anticipated increase of 3.6 percentage points during the 2022–2027 period,” the report stated.