Africa is rebounding from a global pandemic yet is challenged by fiscal constraints and mounting fragility.1 Policy makers are challenged to revitalize economic growth, strengthen resilience, reduce poverty, and build prosperity. This report profiles inequality in consumption and argues that policies to address high levels of structural inequality in Africa are critical for reigniting, accelerating, and sustaining progress in poverty reduction. This report focuses on the roots of structural inequality that are at the heart of Africa’s slow progress in reducing extreme poverty. Rather than resulting from differences in talent or effort, structural inequalities in living standards are those resulting from either inherited or unalterable characteristics—such as where people are born; their ethnicity, religion, or gender; and their parents’ education—or market and institutional distortions that privilege some firms, farms, and workers to access markets, employment, and opportunities while limiting access for the majority, thus curtailing their productive potential and limiting earning opportunities. By one summary measure proposed in this report, structural inequality accounts for one-quarter (Ethiopia) to threequarters (South Africa) of overall inequality in consumption. Deeply entrenched, uneven chances to learn and earn result in significantly lower poverty reduction than elsewhere in the world.