Only five sub-Saharan countries to meet poverty reduction goals

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- Only five of sub-Saharan Africa's 47 countries are expected to meet the global goal of halving the number of people living in poverty by 2015, a World Bank official said Monday.

Robert Holzmann, the bank's director of social security protection and human development, did not say which African countries he expected to reach the goal set out by the U.N. member states at the Millennium Summit. The meeting set out ambitious goals for the world to reduce poverty, fight disease and promote education and development.

Holzmann was speaking at the opening of a five-day World Bank workshop on poverty reduction for 150 employees from 13 sub-Saharan countries. Bank officials have been helping African countries develop poverty reduction strategies to meet the Millennium Summits goals.

Bank officials said African countries face enormous challenges in reversing the trend toward more people living in poverty every year.

Holzman said the number of people living in poverty in sub-Saharan Africa will increase. "By 2015, 600 million people -- almost 70 percent of the population -- will live on less than 2 dollars a day and 345 million on less than one dollar a day compared with 279 million in South Asia and 6 million in the Middle East and North Africa," he said.

The continued spread of HIV/AIDS continues to worsen a public health crisis in most countries, while decimating the working-age population, the bank reported.

The pandemic has left more than 13 million children orphaned and that number is expected to double by 2010, bank documents said.