In the last decades inequality of opportunity has been extensively studied
by economists, on the assumption that, in addition to being normatively undesirable,
it can be related to low potential for growth. In this paper we evaluate
inequality of opportunity in 11 Sub-Saharan Africa countries. According to
our results, the portion of total inequality which can be attributed to exogenous
circumstances is between 30% and 40% for the generality of countries
considered. We also find a positive association between total consumption inequality
and inequality of opportunity and we study the di?erent sources of
unequal opportunities. Finally, we address a number of methodological issues
that typically arise when measuring inequality of opportunity with imperfect
data, which is the typical case in developing countries.