Well-being dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa: A spatial perspective across territorial typologies

In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), efforts to track poverty trends and spatially targeted interventions are constrained by a lack of recurrent and sufficiently granular data. In this paper, we address this lack of information by using a new dataset of spatially explicit welfare indicators (developed by Atlas AI) to examine the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of welfare in the region. We also deepen our understanding of these dynamics by examining how variations in market proximity, biophysical and climatic characteristics have influenced welfare dynamics in the SSA region over the last two decades. We find that while continent-wide wealth and per capita expenditures have improved between 2003 and 2021, these trends have been highly concentrated in areas that are more urban, and within populations already at the top of the wealth distribution in 2003. Moreover, we find that there have been significant improvements in welfare for the parts of SSA with the lowest asset endowments at baseline, but limited or no progress in places that were in the middle or the bottom of the baseline expenditure distribution. The analysis shows that welfare progress has been particularly constrained in the tropical lowlands of SSA – where most of the rural population resides – and in desert and arid areas. Worryingly, these are also the agroecological zones that will likely expand as a result of climate change. Finally, rural populations living in areas where there is limited access to markets and biophysical conditions that constrain agricultural diversification potential have experienced virtually no improvement in welfare over the last 20 years.