Summary:

• 9 of 10 countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 4 are actively worsening, including South Sudan (82.3%), Madagascar (75.9%), Mali (67.2%), and Afghanistan (63.0%).
• DRC has the largest absolute poor population at 68.5 million, despite a slightly lower rate (75.5%), making it the single largest concentration of extreme poverty on earth.
• Afghanistan at 63.0% is the only non-African entry, and the only country whose poverty spike is directly tied to a deliberate political event: the Taliban takeover in 2021.

Statistical Analysis:

The top 10 list is not simply a ranking of poor countries, it is a map of where conflict and climate converge to make poverty structural and self-reinforcing. Seven of the ten countries are simultaneously conflict-affected and climate-vulnerable: South Sudan, DRC, Mozambique, Mali, Burundi, Niger, Central African Republic, and Guinea-Bissau share a pattern of fragile governance that prevents the sustained investment needed to break the poverty cycle. Their poverty rates have not simply failed to fall, but several are actively rising.

DRC is the most demographically alarming case: at 75.5% and 68.5 million people, it holds more people in extreme poverty than any other single country in the world. Even modest economic gains are wiped out by population growth and ongoing eastern conflict. Madagascar’s 75.9% rate reflects a different driver, repeated climate shocks destroying agricultural livelihoods in a country where over 80% of the poor live in rural areas dependent on farming.

Afghanistan’s inclusion as the only South Asian entry, at 63.0% with 26.1 million people, marks a sharp reversal from its pre-2021 trajectory. The Taliban takeover collapsed foreign aid, froze assets, and excluded women from the workforce, removing approximately 50% of potential labour supply from an already fragile economy. It is a stark demonstration that poverty can be politically manufactured in a matter of years.

Policy Recomendations

• Treat conflict resolution as a poverty intervention, in 7 of the 10 countries, security is the prerequisite for any sustainable development progress.
• Direct climate adaptation finance to the agricultural smallholders in Madagascar, Mozambique, and Niger, where climate shocks are the primary poverty driver.
• 3.  Condition international engagement with Afghanistan on measurable poverty and women’s economic participation metrics, political choices caused this spike and only political change can reverse it.