On November 6, Senator-elect of Gbarpolu County, Amara M. Konneh appeared on Spoon Talk and made claims about the number of Liberians living in poverty.
Spoon Talk is a nighttime talk show livestream on Spoon TV Live and radio stations in the Spoon Network. At around two-hour forty-fifth minute (2:25) timestamp of the over six hours show, Mr. Konneh, who is also a former Finance and Development Planning Minister in the Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf administration, claimed that under the Weah administration 3.5 million Liberians are living in abject poverty.
Mr. Konneh made the claim the same day he endorsed former Vice President Joseph Boakia and was appointed Campaign Coordinator of the Unity party in the run-off election scheduled for November 14, 2023.
The Claim
The Senator-elect exact words were: “This election is critical. If you think you made it today and everything is okay that’s good for you, but I can tell you that 3.5 million Liberians are living in abject poverty”.
Definition of Poverty
Abject Poverty, according to Cambridge Dictionary is the state of being extremely unhappy and poor.
The World Bank defines poverty in the following ways:
Poverty is “pronounced deprivation in well-being”. The poor are those who do not have enough income or consumption to put them above some adequate minimum threshold.
- Poverty may also be tied to a specific type of consumption; for example, people could be house-poor or food-poor or health-poor. These dimensions of poverty often can be measured directly, for instance, by measuring malnutrition or literacy.
- The broadest approach to well-being (and poverty) focuses on the capability of the individual to function in society. Poor people often lack key capabilities; they may have inadequate income or education, or be in poor health, or feel powerless, or lack political freedoms.
However, to determine poverty, the World Bank uses the international poverty line. This has been adjusted upward from a person living on US$1.90 per day to US$2.15 per day. This means the new international poverty line introduced by the World Bank is that people who live on less than US$2.15 per day are considered living in extreme poverty.
Rating Justification
To fact check this claim, we conducted extensive research about the living conditions in Liberia using statistics from international institutions like the World Bank.
Our search found a latest World Bank publication titled, Liberia Economic Update June 2023, Getting Rice Right for Productivity and Poverty Alleviation.
The report, which was published on July 28, 2023, states on page 14 that poverty in Liberia has declined due to GDP growth and moderate inflation, adding that Liberia’s international poverty rate was 35.5% in 2022.
By calculation, 35.5% of Liberia’s 5.2 million population as announced by LISGIS is 1,846, 000 (one million eight hundred forty-six thousand).
This means 1,846,000 Liberians live below the international poverty line of US$ 2.15 per day or are living in extreme poverty, according to the World Bank latest data.
Conclusion
Based on these facts, we therefore conclude that the claim made by Gbarpolu County Senator-elect, Amara Konneh, that 3.5 million Liberians are living in abject poverty is incorrect. Mr. Konneh exaggerated the number of people living below the poverty line.
The latest statistics from the World Bank shows that 35.5% of Liberians or 1,846,000 Liberians live below the international poverty line of US$2.15 per day or in living in extreme/ abject poverty.
This report was developed with the support of Internews through the USAID Media Activity project. The funder has no say in the editorial decision leading to the production of this content
