HC Deb 31 March 2004 vol 419 cc1443-4W
Mr. Nigel Jones

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how many(a) families and (b) children in each country in sub-Saharan Africa are living in poverty; and if he will make a statement. [164300]

Hilary Benn

Officially reported figures are unavailable for the number of families and children in sub-Saharan Africa living in poverty. The World Bank has however published figures for the number of people living below US$1 a day in Sub-Saharan Africa. They estimate that in 2000, 323 million people (adults and children) or 49 per cent. of people in sub-Saharan Africa survived on less than US$1 a day. This is an increase of 82 million on 1990

countries, was, in part, the result of DFID-funded work under the Knowledge and Research (KaR) programme. DFID also supports two other ITDG research projects: Smoke, health and household energy; and, Finding ways of scaling up effective and sustainable means of reducing the problem of kitchen smoke.

DFID is looking forward to signing off a Partnership Programme Agreement with ITDG in April 2004.

Further details of DFID-supported research work can be found on DFID's Energy Website, which provides information on all research and development projects in the energy sector supported by DFID's Engineering KaR programme [www.dfid-kar-energy.org.uk]. Projects R8021, R8345 and R7368 are the most relevant, but others also touch on the subject.