East Africa’s social justice challenges are visible in household living standards, access to basic services, safety, displacement and political voice. The latest figures below cover different years and geographic groupings, so each statistic is identified by its measurement period and source.
Contents
- Economic exclusion and unequal living standards
- Essential services and the digital divide
- Gender-based violence and barriers to safety
- Child marriage and girls’ rights
- Displacement, asylum and protection needs
- Women’s political participation
Economic exclusion and unequal living standards
The World Bank’s $3.00-a-day poverty line, expressed in 2021 purchasing-power-parity terms, shows substantial differences among countries. In 2022, 59.8% of Uganda’s population lived below that line. The corresponding shares were 51.3% in Tanzania, 45.5% in Kenya and 38.6% in Ethiopia. These are country-level poverty measures for 2022, not a single estimate for East Africa as a whole. Source: World Bank, Data for Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia and World Bank, Data for Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
| Country | Population below $3.00 a day, 2022 |
|---|---|
| Uganda | 59.8% |
| Tanzania | 51.3% |
| Kenya | 45.5% |
| Ethiopia | 38.6% |
The same World Bank indicator set reports modeled ILO unemployment rates for 2025. Kenya’s rate was 5.4% of the labor force, compared with 3.3% in Ethiopia, 2.7% in Uganda and 1.6% in Tanzania. Unemployment is a labor-market measure and should not be read as the opposite of poverty: people may be working while still living on very low incomes, and unemployment definitions do not capture every form of insecure or insufficient work. Source: World Bank, Data for Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia and World Bank, Data for Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
Kenya’s inequality record also spans a long period. The Kenya Poverty and Equity Assessment 2023 reports a Gini index of 45.0 in 2005/06, based on the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey, and 39.1 in 2021, based on the Kenya Continuous Household Survey. The survey sources and periods differ, so the figures describe inequality at those two measurement points rather than a continuous annual series. Source: Kenya Poverty and Equity Assessment 2023.
Essential services and the digital divide
Basic household hygiene coverage remained limited in both rural and urban settings in 2022. UNICEF’s Joint Monitoring Programme reported rural coverage of 5% in Ethiopia, 19% in Somalia, 23% in Tanzania, 25% in Uganda and 35% in Kenya. Urban coverage was higher in every listed country: 20% in Ethiopia, 32% in Somalia, 40% in Tanzania, 47% in Uganda and 45% in Kenya. These figures measure basic household hygiene coverage, not every dimension of water and sanitation access. Source: UNICEF, Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000–2022.
| Country | Rural coverage, 2022 | Urban coverage, 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| Ethiopia | 5% | 20% |
| Somalia | 19% | 32% |
| Tanzania | 23% | 40% |
| Uganda | 25% | 47% |
| Kenya | 35% | 45% |
The rural–urban gap was especially large in Tanzania, where the reported difference was 17 percentage points, and Uganda, where it was 22 percentage points. Ethiopia’s reported rural and urban coverage levels were 5% and 20%, respectively. Those comparisons are descriptive differences between the supplied percentages, not estimates of change over time.
Energy and connectivity provide another view of unequal access. Access to electricity reached 77.0% of Kenya’s population in 2024, compared with 56.6% in Ethiopia and 52.4% in Tanzania. The World Development Indicators also report that only 9% of Uganda’s population used the internet in 2024. Electricity access and internet use are different indicators, and the figures should not be combined into one measure of the digital divide. Source: World Bank, Data for Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia and World Bank, Data for Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
Gender-based violence and barriers to safety
UN Women summarizes a regional burden of violence across East and Southern Africa: at least 42% of women and girls experience physical or sexual violence during their lifetimes. The same 2024 regional summary states that one in three girls and women aged 15–49 has experienced intimate-partner violence, while one in four girls and women aged 15–24 has experienced it. The age ranges differ, so these statistics should be kept separate. Source: UN Women, How Gender Data Is Enabling Better Services for Gender-Based Violence Survivors.
Country figures show why national context matters. In Kenya, 45% of girls and women aged 15–49 had experienced physical violence. The same UN Women page reports that 42% of women and 36% of men in Kenya believed that a man can be justified in beating his wife under some circumstances. These are survey findings concerning attitudes and reported experience; they are not measures of the same population or phenomenon.
For Rwanda, 41.5% of ever-partnered girls and women aged 15–49 had experienced physical and/or sexual intimate-partner violence at least once in their lives in 2021. In Uganda, 55.5% of girls and women aged 15–59 had experienced physical and/or intimate-partner violence at least once in their lives in 2021. The source also cites a Uganda National Violence Against Women and Girls Survey reporting that 95% of women had experienced physical and/or sexual violence. Because the age ranges, definitions and survey references differ, these values should not be ranked as though they were one standardized series.
For Ethiopia, the cited 2016 EDHS finding was that at least one in three women had experienced intimate-partner physical, sexual or other abuse during their lifetimes. Together, the regional and country measures indicate both the scale of violence and the importance of consistent definitions, age groups and survey methods when comparing countries. Source for all country figures in this section: UN Women.
Child marriage and girls’ rights
UNICEF’s statistical overview for Eastern and Southern Africa states that about 55 million girls and women had married or entered a union before age 18. About 32% of young women in the subregion had married or entered a union before age 18. These are estimates based on the latest available country surveys compiled in 2022, rather than a measurement taken in one common survey year. Source: UNICEF, Child marriage in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Country profiles in the same UNICEF overview show different levels and population counts. In Ethiopia, about 17.3 million girls and women had married or entered a union before age 18, and 40% of women aged 20–24 had done so according to the 2016 DHS. About 7.5 million girls and women had married or entered a union before age 15. In Kenya, the corresponding under-18 count was about 4.2 million, while 25% of women aged 20–24 had married or entered a union before age 18 according to the 2014 DHS; about 1.1 million had entered a union before age 15.
Uganda’s profile recorded about 4.7 million girls and women married or in a union before age 18. The share among women aged 20–24 was 34% in the 2016 DHS, and about 1.3 million girls and women had married or entered a union before age 15. Tanzania’s profile recorded about 5.7 million girls and women married or in a union before age 18; 31% of women aged 20–24 had married or entered a union before age 18 in the 2015–2016 DHS, and about 1.2 million had entered a union before age 15.
The counts use DHS results and UN population estimates identified in the 2022 profile, while the percentages refer to the specified survey populations. UNICEF projected that, if progress did not accelerate, another 20 million girls in Eastern and Southern Africa could become child brides during approximately the decade after the 2022 publication. That figure is a projection, not an observed total. Source: UNICEF.
Displacement, asylum and protection needs
By mid-2024, the East and Horn of Africa and Great Lakes region hosted about 5.4 million refugees and asylum-seekers and about 18.8 million internally displaced people. These categories describe different forms of forced movement: refugees and asylum-seekers have crossed an international border or seek international protection, while internally displaced people remain within their country. Source: UNHCR, East and Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes.
The region’s end-2022 figures were 4.9 million refugees and asylum-seekers and 10.7 million internally displaced people. The mid-2024 figures therefore describe a later snapshot, not a fully comparable annual change calculation, because the dates and reporting context differ. UNHCR’s 2023 planning figures also included 121,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in Ethiopia.
For year-end 2024, UNHCR’s planning figure was 23.6 million forcibly displaced and stateless people in the region. The planning figure represented 18% of the global total of forcibly displaced and stateless people. Both values are identified by UNHCR as planning or forecast figures, so they should not be presented as a completed year-end count. Source: UNHCR, 2024 Global Appeal for the East and Horn of Africa and Great Lakes.
Women’s political participation
Women held 42% of seats in Ethiopia’s national parliament in 2025, compared with 40% in Tanzania, 34% in Uganda and 23% in Kenya. The figures describe parliamentary representation, not the wider distribution of political leadership, voting power or decision-making authority. Source: World Bank, Data for Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia and World Bank, Data for Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
The representation figures sit alongside the safety and economic measures above. A higher share of parliamentary seats does not by itself establish equal access to public services or freedom from violence, just as a lower poverty rate does not establish equal political voice. Read together, the indicators show several connected dimensions of social justice: material resources, basic household conditions, personal safety, protection from harmful practices, protection during displacement and participation in public institutions.