The challenges of poverty alleviation and the need to involve people

About five years ago, in Abuja, Nigeria, twenty ministers of Finance and five Central Bank Governors from across Africa gathered to discuss how to reduce poverty and achieve the much talked about Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The ministers and governors were asked by K.Y. Amoaka, the then Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, to “put all the pieces together” and agree on the urgent actions needed to erode poverty on our beleaguered continent”. The urgency to push for accelerated and expanded action with regard to the eradication of poverty in Africa has become an obsession by policy makers. However, the meaningful contributions of the poor as decision makers must remain central to any ambitious blue print for change. If it is not, there is a risk of the past once again becoming a prologue to the future.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 mobilize 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 also 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 lies the jigsaw puzzle we must strive to break. We have philosophized and theorized so much about poverty without examining its proper context.Our villagers and urban slum dwellers, living in appalling conditions, have been conditioned through decades 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 organizations 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 48.8% beats Sweden in having 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. Women leaders should not pay lip service to poverty alleviation. In our endeavours 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 the majority of our people live on less than one Dollar a day!

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The challenges of poverty alleviation and the need to involve people