FEATURE: "Poverty and Plenty": The case of Africa

As we begin the new millennium, the world stands ever united in its conception of poverty and inequality as two of the greatest contemporary development challenges. The endorsement of the United Nations millennium development goals by 189 countries in September 2000 in New York, USA, declaring the period 1997 to 2006 as the “United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty”, and multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, IMF, DFID and the United Nations Development Programme, securing consensus on key operational and conceptual issues relating to poverty, inequality and economic growth, is clear holistic testimony on the part of the international community’s commitment to freeing individuals from the dehumanizing condition of poverty.

The annual commemorations of 17th October as the “International Day for the Eradication of Poverty” is ample prove of this new found resolve. However a casual glance at the poverty of the nations of Africa lays bare its uniqueness in terms of the paradoxical challenge and content of poverty. The paradox of African development is the existence of mass poverty in a continent that abounds in riches in terms of human and natural resources. Africa has the highest morbidity and mortality rates in the world and the continent is also the most affected by the AIDS epidemic, by the end of 1999, 24 million of the world’s 34 million adults and children living with HIV/AIDS were in sub-Saharan Africa which is over 70% of the world’s infected persons. Africa’s poor are the poorest of the poor. More than 40% of its 600 million people live below the internationally recognized poverty line of $1 a day. These are the humbling realities confronting African development.

What then are the underlying causes of Africa’s poverty in the midst of plenty? This question is the main thrust of this article because at the core of the difficulty of ascertaining poverty is its multidimensionality and how it manifests itself. It is a health problem, an environmental problem, a trade problem, a governance problem, a peace problem and even a historical problem. This many faces of poverty must be answered; otherwise Africa will continue to be dogged by the tragedy of poverty, which is impeding the business of development for the benefit of all. But in order to understand the causes we must first attempt to define what is poverty? Because it is only when we know the later that the former will make sense.

The definition of the term ‘poverty’ has become more elusive today than what it was a decade ago By virtue of the United Nations Development Programme’s, Human Development Report in 1990 this has broadened the definition and measurement of poverty beyond income to include indicators such as literacy, health, life expectancy and other measures of a nation’s well being which were hitherto not considered thus, although I will propose some definitions of poverty it is nevertheless not all encompassing and posits that consensus on what is poverty is far from complete. The most common approach to the definition of poverty is an income or consumption centred approach. According to this definition, the poor are identified as those who command levels of income that are insufficient to provide a minimum standard of living. A second approach to the definition of poverty places emphasis on the basic capabilities of people. Considered in terms of lack of basic human capabilities, absolute poverty can be defined as a condition of life so limited by malnutrition, lack of hope, disease, high infant mortality, low human dignity, high infant mortality, low life expectancy as to be described as humanly decent. Poverty is pain; it feels like a disease. It attacks a person not only materially but also morally. It eats away one’s dignity and drives one into total despair. But, for those who experience poverty however, it is a deeply personal phenomenon, thus there should be no illusion that any single definition of poverty can be universally good or serve as a ‘magic bullet’.

I will begin this discussion by positing that, Africa’s poverty is a structural problem. This structural deficiency is the root cause of Africa’s predicament. African economies structured to be import-export oriented rather than production-oriented makes it dependent rather than self-reliant. A structure that encapsulates producing commodities it does not need because its people consume very little of such commodities while it depends on other people for the production of its own needs. Others include inter alia poor performance of the agriculture sector. Agriculture has always been crucial for African economic growth. Productivity revolutions in agriculture have historically provided the strongest push to broad based growth, industrialization, and employment creation and poverty reduction in many developing countries (eg China). Year round availability of inexpensive food and agricultural raw materials is a prerequisite for stable growth, development and poverty reduction. The absence of technology, agricultural growth strategies and policies to boast agricultural production has robbed the continent of the one sector in which the assets of the poor could yield the highest returns. Long seen as the base for industrial development, agriculture has not played this role in Africa. The sector operates far below potential, with poor storage and processing facilities contributing to post-harvest food losses. Practical steps to revitalize the agricultural sector, which, is crucial to poverty eradication, has been non-existent in Africa. It is imperative that, we feed our industries and ourselves. Because it is only when people have enough to eat that they can be productive. Also, a lack of good and democratic governance has resulted in Africa’s present predicament. Good and democratic governance is the effective exercise of power and authority by government in a manner that serves to improve the quality of life of the populous. This includes using state power to create a society in which the full development of individuals and of their capacity to control their lives is possible. A ruling class that sees the state solely as a means of expropriating the nation's limited resources is simply incapable of good and democratic governance. More specifically, such a class would by its character and mission abuse power this is precisely what is happening in Africa. The wide spread pessimism about African prospects for eradicating poverty is a multiplier effect of, political repression, corruption and ethnic sectarianism in effect, bad governance. Bad governance is not mainly a problem of ignorance or lack of infrastructure capacity or even of individual dictators. States in Africa are incapacitated as instruments of development because ruling classes, including people in and outside government, are motivated by objectives that have little to do with the common good of the people, greed on the part of politicians have meant that money donated by the international community for development purposes have ended up in the wrong hands. This has prompted many to suggest that Africa’s tragedy is not that its nations are poor, that is a product of history or to put it more aptly colonialism. The tragedy is that it lacks ruling classes that are committed to overcoming the state of poverty. Politicians in Africa compete with each other for power, but fail to use the power to confront their country's poverty once elected.

Is it therefore impossible to reduce poverty in Africa? Consensus on this is divided but I belief it is achievable. Schools of thought on what should be the approach to what is the right way to provide the needed help for poor people have tended to shift between growth and sustenance, and pro poor growth for a decade or more. However recent development in Asia notably china Indonesia, Malaysia and the achievements of Mauritius has shown that although growth is necessary for poverty reduction it is not the antipode of poverty. The goal is to get to the multi-dimensional roots of poverty, including through the creation of economic opportunity; the empowerment of women; participatory approaches to government budgeting; and the better delivery of social services. In facing these challenges, Africa has enormous unexploited potential. The region has great scope for more effective use of its resources as well as improving the delivery of the essential services needed to upgrade the capabilities and health of its people and increase their opportunities. If indeed “the world provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not every man’s greed” as Mahatma Gandhi once proclaimed then the missing link in the fight against poverty is good and democratic governance if poverty is to be reduced and to meet the international set targets of reducing or halving the number of poor people in the world by 2015. By definition growth generates more income. But the poor are unlikely to receive a fair share of the increased income if they are not empowered, first economically, but just as important, socially and politically.

What, then, is governance? And what is good and democratic governance? Governance can be seen as the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country's affairs at all levels. It comprises the mechanisms, processes and institutions, through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences. Governance includes the state, but transcends it by taking in the private sector and civil society. All three are critical for poverty eradication. The state creates the right political and legal environment. The private sector generates jobs and income. And civil society facilitates political and social interaction - mobilising groups to participate in economic, social and political activities. Good and democratic governance is, among other things, participatory, transparent and accountable. It is also effective and equitable. And it promotes the rule of law. Good and democratic governance ensures that political, social and economic priorities are based on broad consensus in society and that the voices of the poorest and the most vulnerable are heard in decision-making over the allocation of development resources.

Alleviating poverty means that the poor have access to the goods and services that are essential for their survival and well-being and must be affordable. These include such services like education, clean drinking water, food and health services. But to make this available to the poor entails more specific objectives like access of the poor to the basic factors of production especially land and investment capital, job creation opportunities, equity of wealth so that the majority of the population of a country enjoy the national wealth and above all economic growth should be pro growth. The pursuit of rapid economic growth has great appeal as a strategy for poverty reduction. Economic growth is important for the development of a country and in the fight against poverty but it will not benefit the poor unless they reach the poor. Poverty is ultimately an unemployment problem and more often than not economies deliver jobs when they are growing. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the more equal and more pro poor economic growth is, the more efficient it will be in reducing poverty. The problem of most African governments is that there is a dearth of ideas on what constitutes pro poor growth strategies. What then is pro poor growth? Growth is pro poor when it expands economic opportunities for poor people with relatively equitable distribution of financial and physical capital, including land. Also, poverty reduction will require capacity building in key institutions. In the final analysis, poverty reduction requires strong functional coalitions, coordinated by strong institutions. The institutions that interact with poor people, both within and outside government should serve poor people better. Finally, precisely because of its multidimensional character, poverty will require a strongly integrated approach. Poverty needs to be mainstreamed so that all government agencies understand their specific contributions to poverty reduction. If indeed, poverty is primarily a structural problem, our strategies for poverty must be designed accordingly.

The most effective way to tackle poverty is to expand the opportunities by which the poor can do more for themselves economically, socially and politically. Poverty is a multifaceted phenomenon that does not signify only a lack of income. To be more resilient to poverty the poor must first have the means to do so and also participate in the decisions that affect them. In either case the crucial reform should be in African country’s governance structure. This is the message that this article exhorts.