Millions of people in East Africa live in poverty. Two countries with the lowest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in the entire world are found here. Compare the GDPs per capita from this chart:

Gross Domestic Product
Burundi	Ethiopia	United States	Canada
$83	$97	$37,648	$27,079

War in East Africa

The widespread poverty in East Africa is compounded by many wars in the region, including:

• The 20-year civil war in Uganda, where ongoing fighting sees about 30,000 women and children walking hours every night to find safety from rebel armies known for raiding villages, kidnapping children and forcing them to fight as child soldiers. Since 1986, 20,000 children have been forced into this war.
• The 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where 800,000 Tutsi people were murdered in only about 100 days.
• The Ethiopian Civil War, the Somali Civil War, the Mozambican Civil War and the Burundi Civil War.

War leaves millions of children orphaned and families living in poverty. Because homes, schools, medical centers and entire villages are destroyed, people who are already struggling to survive on meager amounts of money are faced with even higher and more extreme levels of poverty.