Where are we on the road to zero poverty? Reflections from CPAN Associates in East and Southern Africa

The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is upon us once more, with renewed urgency to reinvigorate action to get to zero poverty. Below, select CPAN Associates provide high level reflections, part of an ongoing discussion of how realistic this goal remains in regions of sub-Saharan Africa.

Fighting extreme poverty remains an uphill task in southern Africa

By Blessings Chinsinga

Extreme poverty remains widespread, deep and severe in southern Africa. Estimates pre-pandemic found that that 88 million people (about 45.1% of the population) lived in extreme poverty. It is moreover estimated that over 40 million more people are expected to face extreme poverty by 2040.

Most countries in the region have not been able to create institutional and social foundations for structural changes to facilitate transformative and sustainable development. On top of this, Covid-19 has had a devastating impact on southern African economies leading to rising poverty, inequality and unemployment. Lack of economic diversification is slowing down the recovery process, especially since commodities play a disproportionate role in most of these economies.

Recovery efforts have been further hampered by a litany of adverse climatic episodes including severe droughts, heavy rains and flash flooding. Some countries have endured successive bouts of cyclones (for example, cyclone Ana, Idai and Freddy) with devastating impacts on their agricultural sectors as well as their basic infrastructure. The Russian-Ukraine war has simply exacerbated the situation. Fertilizers are no longer affordable to most farmers, further crippling the predominantly agrarian economies in the region. The war has also had a negative impact on the prices of various basic commodities worsening the living standards of many people in the region.

Several strategies could potentially reverse southern Africa’s pessimistic outlook on its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty. Robust social protection programmes, especially social cash transfers, are proving effective in changing and diversifying livelihood opportunities of its participants.

Alongside this, agricultural support programmes could play a vital role in the recovery efforts especially for countries reeling from successive bouts of cyclones or droughts. Job creation more broadly, especially through climate smart interventions including those targeting youth, could help support the region’s efforts to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change.

Achievement of substantive gender equality must be central to all policies and programmes by dealing with impediments that limit the economic independence and security of women.

All these efforts require reconfiguring the state to serve as a vehicle for meaningful development and sustainable structural transformation. Through decentralization policy reforms, widely adopted in the region, efforts must be made to genuinely empower people in poverty to play an active part in designing and implementing programmes that are meant to benefit them.

For more on CPAN policy recommendations to get to zero poverty in southern Africa, see:

Microeconomic support for poverty eradication in East Africa, with a focus on Ethiopia and Tanzania

By Judith Kahamba and Yisak Tafere

The successive and multiple crises overlaying structural challenges have deterred East Africa’s promising economic growth. Drought and the COVID-19 pandemic hit Tanzania and Ethiopia hard in the last years. In Ethiopia, the war in Tigray and more recent devaluation of the national currency following the Foreign Exchange Directive has amplified challenges. Tanzanians face various dimensions of vulnerability to poverty on account of climate-related crises and health shocks on the back of weak structural economic transformation, low education levels, limited growth elasticity of poverty and limited public spending on sectors critical for people in and near poverty such as agriculture and health.

The impact of these crises and stressors on poverty reduction has been visible. For example, between 2015 and 2022, absolute poverty and income inequality has increased in Ethiopia. In Tanzania, strong growth has not consistently translated into poverty reduction.

So, what can be done amidst these challenges? In both countries, the governments have implemented various policies and strategies to reduce poverty. With regards to social protection Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program is hailed as one of the most ambitious social protection programmes on the continent. The Tanzania Social Action Fund’s Conditional Cash Transfer and Productive Social Safety Nets also seek to reduce extreme poverty through cash transfers to vulnerable populations.

Continued and increased investment in productive social safety net programs is still crucial in reducing vulnerability to extreme poverty. Reversing external cutbacks will be needed in contexts where international assistance has considerably supported country poverty reduction strategies.

Alongside this, a host of complementary measures are needed. This includes increasing public expenditure on agriculture to improve access to production inputs, irrigation technologies, better infrastructure, and market linkages, as well as proper coordination of the private actors along the key crop, livestock and fisheries value chains. Engagement of the private sector needs to promote climate smart agriculture to overcome the challenge of weather vulnerability in both countries.

With a larger population in the informal sector, the government also needs to invest in human capital and skills development and create a better enabling environment that fosters small enterprises to grow and survive, such as reasonable business taxes and promoting favorable microfinance services to reduce informal sector actors’ vulnerabilities to poverty, especially during external shocks.

For more on CPAN policy recommendations to get to zero poverty in East Africa, see:

Renewing the commitment to social protection in sub-Saharan Africa

By Adeniran Adedeji

Sound macroeconomic stability, debt relief, rising commodity prices, strong global market demand, and favourable trade policies helped some sub-Saharan African countries reduce their poverty rates pre-pandemic. However, poverty reduction was already stalling in many countries prior to COVID-19. Key economic fundamentals in the region have since deteriorated along these metrics, and addressing the root causes of stagnant growth will be critical to reversing the negative poverty trajectory.

To make meaningful progress, additional tools for poverty reduction are necessary. A structured social protection framework could be one of the missing pieces in the policy toolkit, as reinforced above. Historically, social protection in the region has been fragmented, largely donor-driven, and lacked proper targeting mechanisms. The weaknesses in social transfer programs became apparent during the shocks of COVID-19.

However, the pandemic also served as a catalyst for revamping social protection programs across the subcontinent, with many countries introducing social registries and establishing institutional frameworks for social protection. Scaling up these efforts, coordinating social protection initiatives, and enhancing the role of key actors in funding and policy coordination will be crucial for sustained progress in poverty reduction.

Revamping the social protection delivery mechanism is also crucial. Digital technologies can support mapping the vulnerable groups and better targeting of the poor. Innovations that reduce leakages and improve the efficiency of social transfers will be needed in fighting corruption effectively.

For more on CPAN policy recommendations centred on social protection, see:

Forging renewed commitments towards eradicating extreme poverty

By: Keetie Roelen and Vidya Diwakar

Blog in observance of 17 October 2023, the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

Source: Shutterstock

‘Decent Work and Social Protection: Putting Dignity in Practice for All’ is the theme of this year’s UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty held on 17 October. Enabling these outcomes and practices is more pertinent than ever. According to recent reports, the world is currently off track to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1 on ending extreme poverty by 2030. The Covid-19 pandemic, rising food and fuel prices, debt and other intersecting crises including climate change and conflict are making lives more precarious and creating new poverty traps.

This changing landscape requires a rethink of the most appropriate and effective ways to reduce poverty and help people to navigate precarity, respond to shocks and increase resilience.

On 27 and 28 September 2023, the Centre for the Study of Global Development at the Open University hosted the international workshop ‘Poverty Reduction: Rethinking Policy and Practice’. Co-hosted by the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network at the Institute of Development Studies, and supported by the Development Studies Association and EADI networks, the hybrid workshop welcomed 45 participants from around the world to discuss the current state of affairs and share ideas for getting back on track towards ending extreme poverty.

As co-organisers, we reflect on four of the key take-aways of the workshop discussions.

1. Linking poverty eradication to the climate change agenda

First, the short- to medium-term future of poverty reduction does not look good. Projections and new estimates presented at the workshop suggest a best-case scenario of stagnating poverty rates over the next few years, sometimes concentrated in challenging contexts of conflict and various sources of fragility including those due to climate risk. More pessimistic estimates indicate that poverty may even increase.

Yet despite the continued scale of the challenge, workshop participants expressed concerns on how poverty eradication seems to have slipped down the development agenda.

Linking the poverty eradication and climate change agendas more closely could be a means of renewing international commitments towards poverty reduction, given the reinforcing relationships that underpin these global challenges.

2. Balancing resilience-building with recovery programming

Second, intersecting crises only amplify the scale of the challenges experienced by people in and near poverty, and can act to drive downward mobility, as observed during Covid-19. There is moreover a convergence of conflict fatalities, climate-related disasters and high numbers of people in and near poverty in certain low- and lower-middle income countries.

In this context, anti-poverty programming that seeks to respond to intersecting crises requires strengthening. Resilience-building is one such means of pre-emptively addressing multiple crises. At the same time, given the salience and chronicity of these crises, there needs to be a stronger focus on recovery programming such that it goes on for much longer than it currently does.

3. Responding to structural change within decent work and social protection strategies

Third, social protection and broader anti-poverty programming remain spaces for exciting new initiatives and exploration of novel individual, household and community-based interventions, or components thereof. From needs-based case work to use of digital tools to improve village savings and loan associations or public works programmes, there is no shortage of ideas to try and make programming more effective while at the same placing humanity and dignity at its centre.

At the same time, there was strong recognition that more bottom-up approaches can only succeed in an enabling environment. Structural factors, including continued manifestations of global coloniality, and macro policies – to stimulate economic growth, establish labour market conditions, or prioritise public spending – ultimately determine the conditions for success of poverty reduction interventions. An important recurrent theme was the enormous cost of mounting levels of debt for many low-income countries, and the considerable pressures this puts on their public resources.

4. Centring frontline workers in poverty eradication programming

Fourth, the human relationships linking people in poverty to higher-level policymaking are often overlooked or undervalued yet remain vital in achieving poverty reduction. Community leaders, frontline workers and shopkeepers selling subsidised food items, for example, are at the forefront of delivering services, and often also wield considerable power over the allocation of resources themselves.

This makes frontline workers crucial stakeholders in strengthening the social contract between citizens and the state, and holding governments to account. At a more human level, they are at the forefront of ensuring support is delivered in inclusive and dignity-enhancing ways. More research into the relationships between frontline workers and the populations they serve, and more support for these workers, is needed to strengthen the dignified delivery of anti-poverty programming.

 

Note: this blog was simultaneously published on CSGD, CPAN, IDS, EADI and DSA websites in recognition of this year’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

Event: How can we avoid pandemic poverty in the future?

The Covid-19 pandemic was responsible for high but also highly varied mortality and illness, both of which also had major wellbeing consequences for affected individuals, households and communities.

Policy responses to the pandemic also severely disrupted economies and social life and all these together have led to substantial reversals in social and economic progress, especially for poor and vulnerable people in low- and middle-income countries.

In this official-side event at the UN’s 2023 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) organised by the IDS-hosted Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN), we will explore countries’ different responses to these concerns, what mitigating measures were and can be taken in the future, and with what results, and how the WHO’s Pandemic Preparedness Treaty can take account of such needs and learning from the Covid-19 pandemic.

There will also be a Q&A towards the end of the webinar.

Register for the event now

Speakers

Chair

  • Peter Taylor, Director of Research, Institute of Development Studies