The challenges of poverty alleviation and the need to involve people

To transform our people requires that we first intimate with sound, proven principles for engaging them at the local level. In whatever government or other stakeholders do, they must keep the people at the heart of their own emerging plans for reversing the forces of poverty and disenfranchisement — regardless of the disciplines in which they work. Today, so many theories have been churned out on poverty eradication to the extent that we have better insights into the pervasive nature of all humankind. The complexity of poverty has never been clear. It is reasonable to argue that attempts to resolve it cannot be piecemeal as it has been the case before. There has to be an integrated and comprehensive effort, ‘a simultaneous push at both macro and micro levels, through the combined thrust of a powerful battery of strategies’. It is generally agreed that education has a role of immeasurable importance in the attempts to eradicate poverty. Since the primary concern of education is human development, it can mobilise the people’s energies for constructive action. Changing a mindset can mean changing a destiny. No one doubts the multifaceted causes of poverty, but its strongest roots remain in the human mind. Just as wars are said to begin in the minds of men, so does poverty. Once the idea of poverty as an inescapable fact of life begins to take hold of the mind, it diminishes the person and enslaves the will. Therein lay the jigsaw puzzle we must strive to break. We have philosophised and theorised so much about poverty without examining its proper context. Our villagers and urban slum dwellers, some of them living in appalling conditions, have been conditioned through years of neglect, hardship and subjugation to doubt that the current economic system can be changed, and to a great extent, they have mistrusted their own capacity to change the material conditions they find themselves in. Their aspirations are bounded by a low self-concept and feelings of dependency and vulnerability. In the absence of strong and representative social organisations through which to articulate their needs, they tend to stay voiceless and submissive to the limits of human endurance. Many, as in the case of rural women, may never have a chance to discover what they can do and how well they can do it under conditions of equity and encouragement. Rwanda today has embarked on the process of empowering women through affirmative action. At a global level, Rwanda, with a figure of 65.5 per cent, has the world’s highest number of women in Parliament. Through the 2003 Constitution, the women of Rwanda are able to participate fully in the decision making process. What this means is that through deliberate empowerment, women can turn the tide against many odds that confront them on a daily basis. Beyond the encouraging statistics, women in positions of responsibility should take full advantage of this and initiate fundamental and far-reaching initiatives that could lead to the transformation of society. This will indeed be a paradigm shift into a new way of doing things. Women leaders should not pay lip service to poverty alleviation. In our endeavors to banish the spectre of poverty, we must demonstrate our commitment by showing examples of humility, simplicity and avoid living ostentatious lifestyles. After all, we should not forget that a sizeable number of our people live on less than one Dollar a day. There are interesting comparisons between South Korea and Rwanda. After South Korea, Rwanda ranks number two as the most densely populated country in the world. Rwanda has received considerable mention internationally for her recovery story which has led some development gurus to dub Rwanda the ‘Disney Land’ or Singapore of Africa. Just as South Korea began in the early years following a civil war, Rwanda has over the past 20 years sought to diversify contribution to her Gross Domestic Product (GDP) away from labour-intensive activities, and witnessed the service sector surpass the agriculture sector in 2005. While the door appears open at the White House and US Congress has recently come up with more new cash aid for Africa, especially in energy, there are still obstacles from the US. Under the Obama administration, now left with barely two years to its end, financial aid to many African nations has taken a backseat to mundane matters of sexual ideology such as gay rights and other issues pertaining to social engineering. The US signs cheques but has made the mistake of failing to lead on the question of Africa’s development. If our continent is to develop and banish the spectre of poverty, Africa’s leadership must not only be at the forefront in the fight against poverty and underdevelopment, they must also involve their people. And as someone put it, poverty is a cruel kind of hell. It would be difficult to understand how cruel that hell is by merely gazing upon it as an object. At some stage during George W. Bush’s presidency, he was ready and prepared to raise levels of US aid for ‘the poor folks’ of Africa, though the size of the package was not quite known because he was not ‘interested in formulae’! oscar_kim2000@yahoo.co.uk

Opinions

The challenges of poverty alleviation and the need to involve people