Sub-Saharan Africa

As the UN looks to adopt new goals for the next 15 years, sub-Saharan Africa still lags behind other developing regions in the areas of poverty, health care and education.

The urgency expressed by Pope Francis on global poverty and inequality is grounded in harsh reality. 4.4 billion people – 71% of the global population of 6.2 billion – lived on $10 or less per day in 2011, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the most recently available data.

Sub-Saharan Africans are feeling positive about their current and long-term economic prospects compared with those in other regions of the world. However, they still see the need for more foreign aid and are concerned about the serious challenges facing them, especially when it comes to better health care and jobs.

People in sub-Saharan Africa are optimistic about their future, but they also recognize that their countries face tremendous challenges — identifying health care and education as top concerns.

Those surveyed are generally disgruntled about the state of their economy, and many are also pessimistic about the financial prospects of the next generation.

When President Barack Obama travels to Kenya and Ethiopia later this week, he will likely receive a warm public reception. Obama, whose father was Kenyan, is very popular in both countries, as well as in many other nations in sub-Saharan Africa. But it’s not just Obama – as Pew Research Center surveys have shown over the years, the United States consistently receives high marks throughout the region.

As the Islamic militant group ISIS continues to entrench itself in Syria and Iraq, concerns about Islamic extremism are growing in the West and in countries with significant Muslim populations.

While either Christians or Muslims make up the largest religious group in nine-in-ten nations around the globe, the religiously unaffiliated rank second in size in most of the Americas and Europe, as well as in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

At least one-in-five people in Japan, Germany and Italy are already aged 65 or older, and most other European countries are close behind.

In a few short years, the proliferation of mobile phone networks has transformed communications in sub-Saharan Africa. It has also allowed Africans to skip the landline stage of development and jump right to the digital age.