by Barbara Lopi and Munetsi Madakufamba
The task to reduce poverty in southern Africa remains one of the region’s fundamental challenges that need a concerted effort between governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the private sector and the international community.
Poverty, defined as the “inability to attain minimal necessities to sustain life,” is in this region mostly caused by economic structural adjustment programmes, over-dependence on one or two export commodities, and regular and increasingly prolonged occurrences of drought, combined with burgeoning human populations, and highly skewed patterns of resource distribution.
A study by the Southern Africa Department of the World Bank shows that an average of 50 percent of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)’s population of over 150 million people live on an income that is insufficient to meet their basic needs
“It is estimated that the percentage of the population who live in poverty ranges from about 25 percent in Zimbabwe up to at least 60 percent in Mozambique. Poverty is considers le and unquantified in Angola, but significant in Botswana, Namibia, and Swaziland,’ says the document.
Poverty in southern Africa is widespread and most predominant in rural areas w ere people have least access to productive assets and are more prone to natural disasters such as drought spells. In the quest to reduce poverty, some governments in the region have in consultation with NGOs, trade unions, the private sector and other stakeholders, embarked on various poverty alleviation programmes.
The governments of Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe are currently working on programmes aimed at upgrading the socio-economic status of their people and these are Poverty Alleviation Program (PAP), Social Sector Rehabilitation and Development Program (SSRDP), and Poverty Alleviation Action Plan (PAAP) respectively.
In Malawi where about 60 percent of the national population of 11 million live in poverty, PAP has introduced a number of organisations and institutions to assist the ordinary person pull out of the economic cnS1S.
Among them are the Malawi Social Action Fund, established to enable communities to start development projects in their respective areas with assistance from government; the Malawi Rural Finance Company, launched last year to give loans to people in rural areas to boost agricultural activities; the Small Enterprises Development of Malawi; and the Development of Malawian Traders Trust to help aspiring and established business persons set up and improve their enterprises respectively.
Zambia which is going through its second phase of the economic restructuring programme, the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), has increased allocations to education and health in real terms by 19 and 12 percent respectively, to alleviate the plight of vulnerable groups.
The Social Safety Net established in 1992, under the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services, is under review.
Zimbabwe which is also about to embark on its second phase of the reform program has under PAAP launched a report on preliminary results of a nation-wide Poverty Assessment Study Survey (PASS) to establish the nature of poverty at national, provincial and district levels.
The final PASS report is expected to come up with a comprehensive poverty situation study, thus enabling Zimbabwe to overcome one of the major constraints that most governments faced with their poverty alleviation plans — lack of systematic problem analysis before developing remedial policies.
Zimbabwe Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Florence Chitauro, says PASS is going to equip policy-makers, planners and researchers with useful data and guidelines in designing programmes to reduce poverty.
PAAP is expected to redress the legacy of the first phase of Zimbabwe’s economic reform programmes that has come under fire for harsh budgetary cuts on social services. The Social Dimensions Fund, set up to cushion the disadvantaged people against the adverse effects of the reform program was far too underfunded to meet increasing demand, mainly in education and health.
Although the World Bank cites Tanzania as one SADC member state that has made considerable progress in poverty alleviation, a lot still needs to be done, especially in rural areas where about 85 percent of all poor people live.
Botswana, Mauritius and South Africa are doing fairly well with per capita incomes of US$2 800, US$2 700 and US$2 980 respectively, the highest in the region. However, equity remains an elusive aim.
“Poverty still haunts many rural and most remote areas in the country despite a series of programmes targeted at the rural poor,” says a Batswana official.
Although most governments have put in place safety net mechanisms, their effects have not been realised yet due to various constraints.
A publication by Oxfam, The Oxfam Poverty Report, singles out the following as common constraints to social safety-net mechanism, Jack of up-to-date facilities on which to base policy decisions; limited participation of the poor in poverty reduction programme designs and community participation in the identification; formulation, implementation and evaluation of projects, inappropriate institutional structures; and inadequate guiding policies.
Lack of specific policies to address the issue of poverty among women is another inadequacy to poverty alleviation programmes. Like in all developing countries, in southern Africa women account for almost 70 percent of people living in poverty.
Generally this is because of their unequal situation in the labour market, unfair treatment under social welfare systems, and their status and power in the family.
Among rural women, poverty is linked to lack of access and control over means of production such as land, labour, capital and extension services. Given the present status where women account for a huge percentage of those living in poverty, it is imperative that anti-poverty programmes give special attention to addressing poverty among women to achieve better res 1
It is with this in mind chat the UN Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China, last year identified “twelve critical areas of concern” perceived as major contributing factors to the impoverishment of women, to be redressed.
A leaflet on H’omen and Poverty in Southern Africa produced by Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC), urges “governments in collaboration with NGOs, the private sector and the international community to commit themselves to solving the twelve critical areas of concern as they pledged at the Beijing conference. ”
The adoption of SAPs without due regard of prevailing economic situations have aggravated the region’s economic problems in that, among other things, they “have created a compulsion of prioritising the export of commodities at the expense of food production.” Trade liberalisation has seen local markets being swamped by imports and the removal of subsidies on basic goods and services.
Over-dependence on the export of one or two primary products, whose prices on the world market are controlled by the world’s economic giants, is another issue that exacerbates the plight of SADC countries. For instance, Angola relies on oil, Botswana on diamonds, Malawi on tobacco and Zambia on copper to generate the bulk of their foreign exchange. Unfortunately most of these products have been adversely affected by fluctuating world prices. Regional development is also hampered by capital flight where trans-national companies send back to their parent countries all profits and dividends generated.
Despite extensive lobbying for more foreign direct investment into the region, the rate of inflow is still very low. Poor foreign investment is also attributed to the legacy of apartheid-driven sanctions and regional instability.
For poverty reduction programmes in the southern African region to be more effective, poverty definitions which incorporate a wide range of financial and social yardsticks into a composite measure that embraces the views of the poor themselves should be established
such measures should, moreover, be region-specific and country-specific, taking into account the need to preserve cross-country comparability as far as possible. (SARDC)
