There is still a severe and scary amount of extreme poverty in rural parts of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma and sub-Saharan Africa.

In India there are more poor people in three states... than there are in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

In sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 1 in 5 girls make it to secondary school.

Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to 400 million of the world's poorest people.

I've done a lot of practical anthropology, living in villages with people and realizing how difficult it is to get out of poverty. When in poverty, people use their skill to avoid hunger. They can't use it for progress.

One of the challenges for sub-Saharan Africa is that markets are of modest size. This makes regional integration important.