A recent survey shows that extreme poverty in Morocco has decreased to around 3%, with the country’s poverty index dropping to 0.48, reflecting progress in providing access to basic necessities such as income, healthcare, food, clean water, and cooking fuel.
The study, conducted by the African polling network Afrobarometer, titled “A Decade of Deprivation: Severe Living Poverty Rises in Many African Countries,” noted that the rate of extreme poverty in Morocco has decreased from 7% in 2014 to 3% in 2023.
Meanwhile, moderate living poverty stands at 14%, and 36% of Moroccans experience low living poverty.
According to the study, Morocco’s ranking on the Extreme Poverty Index (LPI), which is calculated based on responses to five key questions about deprivation of the necessities, improved by 0.09 points between 2019 and 2023, settling at 0.48. This places Morocco ahead of most African countries, where the average LPI score is 1.45, corresponding to moderate living poverty.
The study also revealed that only 7% of Moroccans experienced a lack of consistent or frequent income last year, a figure that is the lowest in Africa, second only to Mauritius at 9%.
Morocco was listed among the countries where citizens do not face significant food access issues. The report indicated that only 18% of Moroccans had difficulty accessing food, compared to much higher rates in other African countries, including Angola (81%), Mauritania (82%), and Nigeria (84%).
This positive trend comes in contrast to the significant increases in extreme poverty in several African nations from 2014 to 2023. In South Africa, for example, extreme poverty rose from 5% to 20%, while in Namibia, it jumped from 5% to 22%, and in Mali, it escalated from 10% to 27%.
The study also noted that many participants in African countries reported difficulties in accessing basic needs. In 2023, 81% of respondents experienced a lack of cash income, 66% lacked medical care or medicine, 59% faced food insecurity, 57% struggled with access to clean water, and 51% lacked cooking fuel.
The study referenced a 2024 World Bank report that estimated the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide—defined as living on less than $2.15 a day—rose by 23 million from 2019 to 2022. The network emphasized that 8.4% of the global population now lives in extreme poverty, with a significant portion of this population located in Sub-Saharan Africa, a setback in the global effort to achieve the United Nations’ sustainable development goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030.
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