Local Governance for Poverty Reduction in Africa

Abstract

The Concept Paper begins with Part One that looks at the conceptual challenges that shall face participants to the AGF-V Meeting. Poverty is singled out as constituting such challenges and an attempt is made to define and contextualize it within the African realm. Acknowledging that the definition of poverty is often as elusive as the phenomenon itself, it is noted that there is, nevertheless, a general appreciation that poverty fundamentally entails lack of access to income, employment opportunities, normal internal entitlements by the citizens to such things as freely determined consumption of goods and services, shelter and other basic needs of life. In the light of the difficulties to effect meaningful impact on the plight of poor people, there is mounting search for ‘the missing link’ in poverty-focused interventions and, in the process, the multi-dimensional nature of poverty is explored. In particular, the Paper maintains that economic growth (that predominated the definition of poverty for decades) is not sufficient to bring about the needed poverty reduction. The Paper argues that, in most African countries, economic growth has been unable to register a significant impression on poverty, either because it is insufficient or too slow or, more importantly, it has been insufficiently pro-poor in both its quality and structure