30 per cent of Africa's wealth held offshore -Oxfam

An Oxfam report indicates that the worlds richest 62 people now own as much as what the rest of world population own.

In Africa, 30 per cent of all African financial wealth is held offshore, costing about 14 billion dollars in lost tax revenues every year according to Oxfam.

“This is enough money to pay healthcare that could save 4 million children lives a year and employ enough teachers to get every African child into school”, Oxfam said in its report.

This is was in reference the work of Gabriel Zucman, an associate professor at the university of California, which also indicates that about 7.6 trillion dollars of individual wealth sits in off shore tax havens and if tax were paid on the income that his wealth generates, an extra 190 billion dollars would be available to governments every year.

In the report released ahead of the World Economic Forums in Davos Switzerland, the wealth of the 62 richest individuals have increased by 44 percent from 2010 meanwhile that of the 3.5 billion poorest decreased by 41 per cent.

Half of the worlds richest are from the US,17 from Europe with the rest from China,Brazil,Japan, Mexico And Saudi Arabia. among others.

“We cannot continue to allow hundreds of million of people to go hungry while resources that could be used to help them are sucked up by those at the top”, said Winnie Byanina, Oxfam international’s executive director in a statement