Sub-Saharan Africa, a region home to nearly ten percent of the world population, will hold as many as 50 percent of the world's poor by 2015, a survey conductedby the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) showed onTuesday.

The institute also indicated China's growing demand for commodities could present an opportunity for Africa to stage an economic recovery.

As a global proportion and in absolute numbers, Africa will getsignificantly poorer during a time period that will see global poverty reduced by a third, despite the efforts of the African Union and its New Partnership for Africa's Development, the SAIRR said in a statement of its annual survey.

The number of people living on less than a US dollar a day - the definition of extreme poverty - across the globe would decrease significantly from 1.169 billion people in 1999 to 810 million in 2015.

However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to 643 million people, thenumber of people living in extreme poverty would increase from 315million in 1999 to over 400 million by 2015, said the SAIRR.

East Asia and the Pacific region would see their poor reduced from 486 million people to only 80 million. In south and central Asia, the number of people living on less than a dollar a day would decline from over 500 million in 1999 to under 280 million by 2015.

Besides North Africa and the Middle East, which will see the number of people living in poverty increase from six million to eight million between 1999 and 2015, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region that is getting poorer, the institute said.

Source: Xinhua