|
War against poverty proves difficult
2005-09-24 08:13:16
By Ludger Kasumuni
There seems to be a long way to go for Tanzania in eradicating poverty in rural areas. Whether she will meet the Millenium development goals or not is another burning question. Our Staff Reporter Ludger Kasumuni delves into the hitches that Tanzania faces in fighting this evil.
Hamis Ngosha an elderly peasant living in Mwongozo village at the outskirts of Dar es Salaam’s Kigamboni area makes a living by cultivating sweet potatoes, but he says tremendous decline in physical energy following old age is threatening his survival in the wake of growing poverty.
Ngosha who used to own a ten acre fertile plot in Mwongozo village, now owns only half an acre, as he was compelled to sell the greater part of his arable land in a bid to earn some cash to sustain himself.
Researchers on the Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA) being commissioned by a Non Governmental research organisation say that there are millions of poor people facing absolute poverty in Tanzania, especially in the rural areas.
Absolute poverty, according to REPOA researchers is the failure to attain even a minimum level of income. For them people living under absolute poverty, normally earn less than one US Dollar a day.
People who do not have certainty of even getting their means in a day like Ngosha also include those people lacking safety nets against poverty.
The Executive Director of Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF), Prof. Haidari Amani supports that people lacking safety nets against poverty face an extreme level of impoverishment.
The safety nets against poverty, according to him include social security systems and traditional social security systems like the extended families in the traditional African social systems that have been supporting the elderly and physically incapacitated persons.
He says it is unfortunate that the decline in extended families in Tanzania’s society like many other African communities is killing the traditional social security system, which has been providing safety nets against poverty for many centuries.
In the recent meeting on the state of politics in Tanzania the issue of growing poverty, especially in the rural areas has resurfaced.
Former Director for Poverty Reduction in the Vice President’s Office, Dr Servacius Likwelile who presented a paper on the evaluation of the Third Phase Government on Poverty Reduction, said that the great challenge ahead lies on the need to intensify the war against poverty.
Dr Likwelili who is now the Executive Director of Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF), praised the third face government led by President Benjamin Mkapa to put the agenda on poverty at the top of national policies.
But he says there are a lot of things to be done to translate the newly formulated policy on poverty reduction, MKUKUTA into concrete action in order to reduce poverty at grassroot level.
”Poverty has been the number one development agenda for the government since it came into power.
Lessons from the past and challenges emanating from those initiatives, including those from the global arena, have helped shape the intervention packages,” says Dr Likwelile.
The genesis on the global war against poverty, according to him can be traced from the launch of the World Summit for Social Development (WSSD) held in Copenhagen in Denmark in 1995.
The WSSD formulated the International Development Goals, which focused on eradicating absolute poverty in the world through decisive national actions and international co-operation.
Another development on the poverty agenda was the outcome of the Millennium Summit held in September 2000, which set the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs: 8 goals, 18 targets and 48 indicators), says Dr Likwelile.
’’These are set of numerical and time-bound targets that express key elements of human development. The MDGs represent a set of quantitative targets for poverty reduction and improvements in health, education, gender equality, the environment and other aspects of human welfare, to be achieved by developing countries,’’ he says.
He adds: ’’They also provide a challenge to the developed countries to address issues of debt relief, access to markets, trade, Official Development Assistance (ODA) and Foreign Direct Investments (FDI).’’
Dr Likweli also traces the changes on donor conditionality in aid disbursement with the advent of the poverty agenda in international scene.
He says: ’’Discussions centre on aid effectiveness and what it takes to have this happen. The focus is on insuring that recipient countries ensure adherence to good governance, accountability, transparency and judicious utilisation of resources.’’
He further said that the agenda on poverty should not skip intellectual debates, which have drawn a conclusion that poverty is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon.
Thus, it implies that since there is no consensus on the definition of poverty or conceptualisation of poverty, there is no single panacea for fighting against poverty.
In a simplistic manner it can be stated that there is no single prescription to cure this chronic disease, poverty. There is even no single vaccine to avert the spread of poverty in the society, researchers say.
The Project Syndicate journal based in Czechoslovakia has quoted the American Professor of Economics, Jeffrey Sachs, attacking the rich nations for ignoring their promises to assist poor nations like Tanzania to reduce poverty.
The American Professor of Economics based at the University of Columbia, Sachs, says that poverty can only be eradicated in poor countries if the rich countries honour their promises of increasing aid flow to those countries.
In his book entitled: The End of Poverty, Prof. Sachs who is an Executive Director of Earth Institute at Columbia University argues that as long as the rich countries fail to fulfill their promise of disbursing 0.7 per cent of their national incomes as aid to poor countries, the poverty problem will continue to persist in this century.
’’By the early 1990’s, official development assistance was still around 0.33 per cent of donor GNP, and by the early 2000’s, it had declined to around 0.22 per cent of GNP. Now it is roughly 0.25 per cent of GNP, says Prof. Sachs.
But the long-term decline in the ratio of aid to GNP did not stop the rich world from promising time and again to reach 0.7 per cent of GNP, including the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and the Copenhagen Summit on Social Development in 1995, he argues.
At the start of the new millennium, the world leaders got together to adopt the Millennium Development Goals, the global commitment to halve extreme poverty by 2015, he says.
He says to implement these commitments, world leaders, including US President George W. Bush, met again in Monterrey, Mexico, to adopt the Monterrey Consensus on how to achieve the breakthrough from poverty.
The personal presence of Bush is notable, because the rich countries once again adopted the target of 0.7 per cent of GNP, with the US being a signatory, says Prof. Sachs.
Prof. Sachs reveals that even the most powerful nation, the United States has failed to honour her promise of disbursing 0.7 per cent of Gross National Product (GNP).
He says: ’’Yet the US and other countries did sign the Monterrey Consensus urging developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7 per cent of Gross National Product as official development assistance.’’
In fact, US official development assistance amounts to just 0.15 per cent of America’s GNP, which is less than one-fourth the global target, says the American economist, Sachs.
’’This contrasts with the 4 per cent of GNP that the US spends on its military, roughly $500 billion this year. So the US spends around thirty times more on the military than it does on peaceful development aid for the poorest countries,’’ he says.
This is also a challenge to local researchers on poverty reduction and other stakeholders on poverty agenda, that aid is not an effective approach of eradicating poverty as it is tied with conditionality and is not forthcoming in accordance with the rhetoric promises.
According to data compiled by Prof. Sachs, from a global point of view, there are currently five countries that have reached 0.7 per cent of GNP in aid: Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.
Six more countries, all in Europe, have recently set a timetable to reach 0.7 per cent of GNP by the year 2015, which include Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, says Prof. Sachs.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his report in advance of the UN summit of world leaders in September 2005, called on all donor countries to reach at least 0.5 percent of GNP in aid by 2009, and 0.7 per cent by 2015.
Coming to the national performance on poverty reduction, Dr Likwelile reveals that there is improvement in using participatory approach and subsequent results in increase in income poverty in terms of increase in enrollments in primary education to 106 perc ent in 2004 from 58.8 per cent in 1990 and increase in the quality and access of drinking water from 49 per cent in 2000 to 53 per cent in 2003.
Other positive indicators listed by him are the decline in the proportion of the population below the food poverty line from 21.6 per cent in 1991/92 to 17 per cent in 2000/01 and a decline in the proportion of the population below the basic needs poverty line from 38.6 to 30.3 per cent in the same period.
But he says there are still some critical areas of concern for instance, growing income inequalities. Also, poverty incidence is still not at acceptable levels, rural poverty is still growing, illiteracy is still high, pegged at 28.6 per cent and the fact that more than a third of Tanzanians cannot satisfy their basic needs.
He also lists other negative indicators like inability of 18 percent of Tanzanians to afford food required for a healthy living, 90 per cent of Tanzanians not having access to electricity, 25 per cent of the population having to travel more than six kilometres to health centres or dispensaries and the high incidence of HIV/Aids cases now rated at 12 per cent of the population.
The conclusions drawn by Sachs and Dr Likwelile is a clear indication that there is a long way for Tanzania to tackle the problem of eradicating poverty in the rural economy, which is the mainstay of the economy.
|
