This report begins by evaluating Africa’s data landscape to monitor poverty. It maps out and assesses in detail the availability and quality of the data needed to track monetary poverty (expenditures, prices, GDP) and also reflects on the governance and political processes that underpin the current situation. Carrying the work from the first chapter forward, it then evaluates in whether poverty statistics in Africa look different, if one takes seriously issues of data comparability, data quality, and statistical methods? The alternatives to using regularly collected household surveys to measure monetary poverty are further explored? These are the two broad questions addressed in Chapter 2, “Evolution of monetary poverty in SSA”.