What works for Africa's poorest?

David Hulme and David Lawson

This chapter presents both the context from which this volume evolved as well as the situational backdrop for the chapters that follow. In so doing, it asks who are the very poorest in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), how do they survive, and establishes the precariousness of their situation in relation to the steadily, if slowly, improving development picture experienced by many more of the world's poorest. Rather than focus on macro-level conceptualisations of 'being poor' this volume is partially structured around a micro and meso-level lifecycle analysis of extreme poverty that focuses on evidence showing people can be extremely poor at different points in their life. The volume, thus, hopes to: (i) raise awareness of the problems faced by the very poorest people in SSA; (ii) encourage policy-makers and development practitioners to identify projects, programmes, and policies that can assist the very poorest, in the next few years; and (iii) provide practical examples of 'what works for SSA's poorest'.

Keywords: Sub-Saharan Africa; extreme poverty; micro and meso analysis; targeting; survival; lifecycle

Introduction

Over the past 20 years, the world has experienced an unparalleled period of economic growth and dramatic reductions in income/consumption (and multidimensional) poverty. This is a cause for optimism, but at the same time, we must note that the benefits of this contemporary growth have been very unevenly spread. The world's richest 62 people now own assets that have the same value as those held by the poorest 3.6 billion; the bottom half of humanity (Oxfam, 2016).

At the global level, the benefits have been concentrated within China, India, and Southeast Asia, while other regions – sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), much of South Asia, the Andean region, the states of the former Soviet Union, and the Pacific – have improved at much slower rates, and in some countries (including Egypt, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Zimbabwe) life has got harder. SSA countries, long seen as being locked in poverty traps (Collier, 2007) that kept the well-being levels of the majority of their population very low (a more accurate concept might be ill-being), have recently escaped this 'Afro-pessimism' image. Across the continent, economic growth rates have improved and human development indicators have risen. In 2015 Ethiopia, for example, was the world's fastest growing economy (World Economic Forum, 2016), with Côte d'Ivoire predicted to be the world's second fastest in 2016. Additionally, since 1990, infant mortality for SSA children under the age of five years has been reduced by 43 per cent, and the number of maternal deaths has also declined by 47 per cent (Save the Children, 2013; see Ado-Kofie and Lawson (2016) for further discussion).

However, things vary greatly from country to country and at the sub-national level. A common pattern is that many urban areas have seen dramatic improvements in their average levels of income and in human development indicators. By contrast, rural areas, and particularly remote rural areas and conflict zones, have seen little or no benefits. It is evident that the types of broadly based growth that generated the relatively egalitarian East Asian Miracle of the mid- and late-twentieth century – growth with mass poverty reduction – are different from contemporary growth processes in Africa. SSA's dependence on hydrocarbons and minerals for its recent growth, combined with the region starting from a much higher level of socioeconomic inequality, have meant that Africa's growth has been concentrated in fewer hands than in East Asia. As Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, put it: 'Africa is a rich continent with a lot of poor people' (BBC World, 27 July 2015).

This extreme and chronic poverty has spatial and social relational dimensions. Spatially, it is often concentrated in particular areas, for example, mountainous regions, arid/semi-arid lands and landlocked regions across Africa, and informal 'settlements' in the major cities. Socially, it is concentrated within specific groups, such as indigenous or 'tribal' groups (in Botswana, DRC, and elsewhere), ethnic and religious minorities, internally displaced people, and refugees. At the micro level – the household, village, or community – particularly vulnerable individuals, including older people, widows, orphans, and disabled people, are likely to find that they can barely maintain their lives and that they have minimal or no prospects for improvement. At the extreme, the poorest simply disappear, dying unregistered but easily preventable deaths.

This volume arises out of the concerns of a group of development practitioners, policymakers, and researchers about the poorest. It builds on our earlier work (Lawson et al., 2010), and seeks to provide ideas and guidance about how the poorest might be assisted in their personal efforts to sustain themselves and improve their prospects. There have been significant breakthroughs in assisting the poor – from jobs in garment and...