Poverty reduction is not making impact

Accra, Nov 6, GNA - ECOWAS Executive Secretary, Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas said on Thursday that the various poverty reducing arrangements being pursued by countries in the West Africa Sub-Region were not making the desired impact.

He said while member countries had accepted the challenge to fight poverty through the implementation of Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS), the trend so far indicated that the strategies and approaches were not giving any hope that it be reduced anytime sooner.

"Whatever the stage reached and progress made, it has been observed that the present strategies and approaches are not making the amount of impact to assure us that poverty will be significantly reduced, let alone eradicated, in the foreseeable future."

Dr Chambas was speaking at the opening of a two-day Regional Workshop on Poverty Reduction in West Africa in Accra to deliberate on how to adopt a cross-border approach in the fight against poverty in the Sub-Region.

West Africa is among the areas with the highest number of least developed countries that have half of their population living in abject poverty.

The Executive Secretary warned that the impoverishment of the Sub-Region would deepen if current trends were not reversed. He welcomed the focus of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) on tackling poverty and said the idea to develop a Sub-Regional approach was to maximise the contribution of both national and regional actions to poverty eradication through improvement in design, content and implementation of national PRS.

He praised the participatory approach of the PRS process saying it had helped to enhance decentralisation of government and increased people's ownership of economic programmes.

However, the content of the PRS could be improved if member states exchanged experiences and ideas, harmonised and coordinated their national programmes as well as determined the most appropriate set of policy measures for alleviating poverty.

Dr Chambas said: "Such a regional forum could also serve the useful purpose of reviewing individual country's performances and offering necessary guidance towards corrective measures to enhance the contribution of PRS to poverty eradication in West Africa."

Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku, Chairman of ECOWAS Council of Ministers, said the best hope for success in the fight against poverty was to increase trade and investment among member countries. He said enhanced trade would provide a sustainable base for resources to deal with poverty, break the dependency syndrome and be able to meet the necessities of the people.

Dr Apraku called for greater integrative effort and concerted approach to the regional dimension of poverty to complement national policies.

Ms Marie-Nelly Francois, Programme Manager, World Bank, said the regional approach should focus on cross-border dimension on how to fight the incidence of poverty across countries.

She pledged the World Bank's continuous assistance for policy formulation and specific tailored approaches to reduce poverty.