Poverty and Hunger Special Feature: Governance and poverty reduction in Africa

Governance and poverty reduction in Africa.

A careful review of the literature in political science and neighboring social science disciplines shows that prevailing assumptions in the international development policy community about improved governance as a principal mechanism to reduce poverty in Africa rests more on faith than science. Conventional policy models for tackling poverty fail to take into account the peculiar socioeconomic ...

Local Governance for Poverty Reduction in Africa

Improving Governance to Eradicate Poverty and Hunger

W hy has eradicating hunger and poverty proved difficult despite its being a declared goal of the international development community for more than half a century? Why has the number of hungry people increased in recent years? Why is poverty particularly persistent in Sub-Saharan Africa? Why do economically successful developing countries in Asia and Latin America have regions lagging in eradic...

Governance, Growth and Poverty Reduction

Poverty reduction is a function of economic growth, income distribution and distribution changes. Governance can impact both growth and income distribution. The dominant market-enhancing governance paradigm seeks to enhance the efficiency of markets through ‘good governance’ reforms, ostensibly to trigger or sustain growth. ‘Pro-poor’ good governance reforms purport to enhance the scale and eff...

Poverty reduction in Africa.

Poverty in Africa has been rising for the last quarter-century, while it has been falling in the rest of the developing world. Africa's distinctive problem is that its economies have not been growing. This article attempts to synthesize a range of recent research to account for this failure of the growth process. I argue that the reasons lie not in African peculiarities but rather in geographic...