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The Problem of Poverty in Africa Essay

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Introduction

Background of the study, problem statement, research questions, hypotheses and variables, theoretical framework, works cited.

The paper is a proposal on how the problem of poverty in Africa can be solved. The study will use a mixed research approach in attaining its goals (Creswell, 2009). The major aim of the study is to identify the causes of poverty and propose best strategies that can help Africans come out of poverty.

Africa has long been known to suffer from a number of calamities such as floods, drought among others; however the issue of poverty seems to have brushed the continents the wrong way leaving thousands of individuals dead. According to Adato et al., 2006 Currently poverty is seen as a long problem that will continue to be with us, as long as the world remains. Mahatma Gandhi had some of the most creative insights into this problem with regards to India. Mao Tse Tung was similarly quite creative on this issue in China, as was John Kenneth Galbraith with regards to affluent society. There are numerous people who have lost many a night’s sleep on this matter in Africa.

[Poverty is relative, not absolute. It is about getting basic needs, not huge material surpluses. It is about having enough resources for meeting basic needs for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. It is about none material satisfaction not excess material goods of little intrinsic value] (Adato et al., 2006: 23).

There is no doubt that there exist large volumes of material regarding poverty in Africa. With this there are a number of solutions that have been brought forth with the aim of curbing poverty in the continent. Despite the fact that the majority of the authors have tried to address the causes so that they can develop best strategies, their is a gap in trying to establish how best the proposed strategies will be implemented based on the variation in a number of issues such as population, policies in each and every country. The study will thus seek not only to bring out the causes of poverty and how to curb it but propose how to implement the strategies based on the country’s needs.

The research question that will guide the study is what the major ways of curbing poverty in Africa are. From this, the three main objectives of the study are:

• To find out how prevalent is poverty in Africa
• To establish the major causes of poverty in Africa
• To find out the best strategies to curb the issue of poverty in Africa.

The hypotheses for the study are:

• H o There is a significant difference in causes of poverty.
• H o There is a significance difference in strategies used in curbing poverty in Africa and its reduction
• H o There is significant difference in the prevalence of poverty in Africa.

The dependent variable in the study is poverty. It is worth noting that this is the variable the research will try to predict its variation in presence of certain variable known to be independent is important. The independent variable will include all the causes of poverty and the strategies used to curb the same (Reynolds, 2007).

It has been argued that the world food production is enough to feed the world populations. The major problem associated with poverty has been deemed to be unequal distribution of wealth and the natural resources plus the opportunity to access financial resources for investments (Creswell, 2009).

It is human understanding that wealth is generated by labour upon acting on natural resources. From this notion it is evident that if the same is made available to each and everyone and the individuals are encouraged, able and at will to work tirelessly, then poverty could be history. Nonetheless, this is not the case as this vital resource lies in the hands of a few individuals who exercise monopoly over them. Another problem that has caused poverty is the unfair market prices of goods and services from the continent. It is postulated that equal distribution of natural resources and fair market policies will help the poor in Africa to have enough to eat, shelter, clothing and education (Adato et al., 2006.).

Adato, M., Carter, M. & May, J. 2006. Exploring poverty traps and social exclusion in South Africa using qualitative and quantitative data. Journal of Development Studies , 42(1): 226 – 247.

Creswell, J. 2009. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Reynolds, P. 2007. A primer in theory construction. Boston: Pearson Education.

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THREE ESSAYS ON POVERTY REDUCTION AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN MALAWI

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• September 23, 2019
• Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Public Policy
• Malawi remains one of the impoverished countries in the world with about 70 per cent of the population living below $1.9 a day as of 2018. In 2017, the country ranked 171 out of 189 countries in terms of the human development index. The government of Malawi is pursuing various public policies aimed at reducing poverty, building household resilience to shocks and spurring economic growth. One such policy is a nationwide social cash transfer programme (MSCT) aimed at ultra-poor, labor constrained households. The first paper examines the impact of the MSCT on household resilience, and formally tests the validity of the resilience measure. The result show that the MSCT has a positive impact on household resilience, and the resilience indicator is a valid measure of the construct in terms of its predictive power of the likelihood of households adopting positive coping mechanisms to future shocks. The main conclusion from this result is that the resilience index is a good candidate for profiling of household for interventions, and that cash transfers can be considered as a credible option in the search for interventions that seek to improve household resilience. The second paper examines the heterogeneous impacts of the MSCT on household consumption mobility to understand household characteristics and programme design features that could potentially predict sustainable escape from poverty. The results show that design features were the more consistent correlates of high mobility potential than household characteristics. The main conclusion from this paper is that the design features and implementation of cash transfer programs are key to ensure transformative impacts on beneficiaries. The third paper examined the potential and policy option that Malawi could adopt to realize a sizeable demographic dividend by leveraging on the ongoing demographic transition in the country. The analysis shows that even in the best-case scenario, the demographic dividend that would be realized would be moderate, and there is the need to continue to expand social protection programmes and policies to cater for the rising absolute numbers of poor people even if poverty rates fall moderately in the medium to long term.
• demographic dividend
• heterogenous treatment effect
• Public policy
• https://doi.org/10.17615/3mk0-9985
• Dissertation
• Handa, Sudhanshu
• Chowa, Gina
• Angeles, Gustavo
• Morgan, Philip
• Gitterman, Daniel
• Doctor of Philosophy
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School

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Poverty Reduction: Concept, Approaches, and Case Studies

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Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals ((ENUNSDG))

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Definitions

Poverty is universally measured in monetary expenditure terms, and individuals that are considered poor are those living on less than US$1.25 per day. Poverty is however multifaceted as it includes the multitude of lack and deprivations that poor people are subjected to in their lives on a daily basis. These include but are not limited to disease and poor health conditions, illiteracy and lack of access to education, appalling living conditions, lack of access to economic opportunity and disempowerment, underemployment, vulnerability to violence, and exposure to hazardous environmental conditions (OPHI 2019 ). Thus, poverty reduction can be considered as the improvement of an individual’s or group’s monetary expenditure to an amount above the poverty line while improving access to education, healthcare, information, economic opportunities security of land-tenure, and all the other deprivations associated with it.

Introduction

The eradication of poverty is perhaps the only...

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Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria

Yakubu Aliyu Bununu

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European School of Sustainability, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

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Bununu, Y.A. (2020). Poverty Reduction: Concept, Approaches, and Case Studies. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A., Brandli, L., Özuyar, P., Wall, T. (eds) Decent Work and Economic Growth. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71058-7_31-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71058-7_31-1

Received : 23 August 2019

Accepted : 08 September 2019

Published : 10 January 2020

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-319-71058-7

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-71058-7

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