This paper analyses the prospects for social protection reform in Zambia under the ‘pro-poor’ government of the Patriotic Front (PF). The paper argues that the PF has been changing the development policy arena in ways that may modify domestic political structures providing more rights-based benefits especially for the extreme poor and vulnerable. It further argues that the persistence of the clientelistic dynamics of state-society relations and weak civil society organisations inhibit the expression of demands for formal social protection by poor people. It concludes that because the social protection reform is supply -, rather than demand-driven, its progress depends on the extent to which the government is motivated to sustain the provision of social protection in the long-run.
Poverty and health
Much of the benchmarking that takes place in the water sector today focuses on financial and technical performance, making it difficult for water operators to pursue broader social, political and environmental objectives. As an alternative this paper introduces the concept of social efficiency; to widen the scope of performance evaluation by adding new indicators that emphasize equity and promote publicness, informed by extensive field research in Africa and Latin America. We argue that advancing social efficiency could be the most important contribution the Global Water Operators Partnerships Alliance (GWOPA) makes to knowledge transfer in the water sector, given the relatively small budgets it can leverage. WOPs may be the proverbial drop in the bucket when it comes to improving water and sanitation services around the world, but they could be a significant drop in that bucket.The paper examines two WOPs. The first is between Morocco Office National de Électricité et de l'Eau Potable (ONEE) and Burkina Faso Office National de Eau et de Assainissement (ONEA). The second is between Uruguay Obras Sanitarias del Estado (OSE) and Porto Alegre Departamento Municipal de Água e Esgotos (DMAE) in Brazil. The research shows that both of these partnerships reflect the general trend of prioritizing technical and financial efficiency. Despite having innovative social programs at home, neither WOP has formal pro-poor objectives or evaluation mechanisms to assess pro-poor outcomes, highlighting the untapped potential for knowledge sharing on this type of expertise. Platforms such as GWOPA could provide the necessary guidance and incentives to match water operators interested in pro-poor initiatives and prioritize social efficiency in partnership activities.
The author argues that the majority of humanity is on the rack of poverty; and a major obstacle to its eradication is the growing threat of extreme and irreversible climate change. The coexistence of a chronic crisis of serious under-consumption for most with an increasingly critical environmental crisis resulting from over-consumption in aggregate can only be explained by extreme inequality in the global distribution of income. Resolving both simultaneously, as envisaged in the Post-2015 Agenda, requires a fundamental reconsideration of the nature and objectives of economic policy, and of the global economic system. The lecture will discuss the extent and implications of global inequality, before building on a number of working hypotheses to outline an alternative model of economic development more conducive to the achievement of these two most fundamental global goals.
The paper seeks to assess the timeframe for eradication of poverty, defined by poverty lines of $1.25 and $5 per person per day at 2005 purchasing power parity, if pre-crisis (1993-2008) patterns of income growth were maintained indefinitely, taking account of the differential performance of China. On the basis of optimistic assumptions, and implicitly assuming an indefinite continuation of potentially important pro-poor shifts in development policies during the baseline period, it finds that eradication will take at least 100 years at $1.25-a-day, and 200 years at $5-a-day. While this could in principle be brought forward by accelerating global growth, global carbon constraints raise serious doubts about the viability of this course, particularly as global GDP would need to exceed $100,000 per capita at $1.25-a-day, and $1m per capita at $5-a-day. The clear implication is that poverty eradication, even at $1.25-a-day, and especially at a poverty line which better reflects the satisfaction of basic needs, can be reconciled with global carbon constraints only by a major increase in the share of the poorest in global economic growth, far beyond what can realistically be achieved by existing instruments of development policy – that is, by effective measures to reduce global inequality.
International development is dying; people just don't buy it anymore. The West has been engaged in the project for more than six decades now, but the number of poor people in the world is growing, not shrinking, and inequality between rich and poor continues to widen instead of narrow. People know this, and they are abandoning the official story of development in droves. They no longer believe that foreign aid is some kind of silver bullet, that donating to charities will solve anything, or that Bono and Bill Gates can save the world. This crisis of confidence has become so acute that the development community is scrambling to respond. The Gates Foundation recently spearheaded a process called the Narrative Project with some of the world's biggest NGOs - Oxfam, Save the Children, One, and others. They commissioned research to figure out what people thought about development, and their findings revealed a sea change in public attitudes. People are no longer moved by depictions of the poor as pitiable, voiceless "others" who need to be rescued by heroic white people. The author observes that this is a racist narrative that has lost all its former currency; rather, people have come to see poverty as a matter of injustice, that poverty is created by rules that rig the economy in the interests of the rich.
Public water and electricity are back in vogue! Yet many state-owned utilities are now undergoing “corporatization”: they have legal autonomy and manage their own finances. Is this a positive development in the struggle for equitable public services? Or a slippery slope toward privatisation? This video draws from in-depth research on corporatization cases from around the world.
Urban and regional planning is under the spotlight in Kenya. The 2009 National Housing and Population Census forecast that the percentage of Kenyans living in urban settlements will increase from 32 percent to 54 percent by 2030. Residents of Nairobi await the details of a new city master plan. The devolution of power and allocation of central resources to the 47 county governments created by the 2010 constitution is under way – a process that requires integrated development plans to be in place. In the post-independence era, urban planning was deployed as a tool for “modernisation” in Kenya. But in the 1980s and 1990s modernisation was supplanted by autocracy and straitened economic circumstances. In turn, planning became a means for securing control, exclusion and further enrichment of political and economic elites redolent of the colonial era. Legislation based on outdated and inappropriate models such as the UK’s 1947 Town and Country Planning Act was routinely used to carry out mass evictions and demolitions in informal settlements in Kenya. By the end of the 20th century, the planning profession had become irrelevant or discredited to all but its few beneficiaries. In this paper the author describes in detail how the Department of Urban and Regional Planning (DURP) at the University of Nairobi – and other institutions – have sought to revitalise and encourage the adoption of more progressive approaches among planning professionals. Curricula reform, research and innovation, close links with other planning schools in Africa, and working partnerships with civil society organisations in informal settlements are the bedrock of the effort to ensure that Kenya’s future urban planners are equipped to manage rapid urban transformation.
Measuring inequality in access to safe drinking-water and sanitation is proposed as a component of international monitoring following the expiry of the Millennium Development Goals. This study aims to evaluate the utility of census data in measuring geographic inequality in access to drinking-water and sanitation. Spatially referenced census data were acquired for Colombia, South Africa, Egypt, and Uganda, whilst non-spatially referenced census data were acquired for Kenya. Four variants of the dissimilarity index were used to estimate geographic inequality in access to both services using large and small area units in each country through a cross-sectional, ecological study. Inequality was greatest for piped water in South Africa in 2001 and lowest for access to an improved water source in Uganda in 2008. For sanitation, inequality was greatest for those lacking any facility in Kenya in 2009 and lowest for access to an improved facility in Uganda in 2002. Although dissimilarity index values were greater for smaller area units, when study countries were ranked in terms of inequality, these ranks remained unaffected by the choice of large or small area units. International comparability was limited due to definitional and temporal differences between censuses. This five-country study suggests that patterns of inequality for broad regional units do often reflect inequality in service access at a more local scale. This implies household surveys designed to estimate province-level service coverage can provide valuable insights into geographic inequality at lower levels.
Food shortages are the root cause of poverty in Zimbabwe’s Gutu district. Rainfall is generally low and erratic. In most places the soil is sandy and over-cultivated. High population density means that the vast majority of the district’s 40,000 households are restricted to farming on small plots. By the mid-2000s the effect of an economic crisis on the government’s agricultural budget and an over-reliance on growing maize, a crop that requires high rainfall, had drastically undermined food security in Gutu. Following a severe drought in 2005, the Chinyika Communities Development Project was conceived to overcome the persistent threat of food shortages – and even famine – in Gutu. The objective was to persuade farmers dependent on maize production to plant finger millet, a neglected crop that is indigenous to Zimbabwe. Finger millet is drought-resistant and better suited to semi-arid and arid areas than maize. Although its cultivation is more labour-intensive, it requires fewer expensive inputs than maize. It is also highly nutritious and can be stored for up to 25 years. By 2014 almost every household in Gutu had participated in the project. Farmers with a nucleus of finger millet production each have 3-5 years of strategic food reserves and the collective capacity to produce a surplus of up to 2,000 tons a year. Accumulated reserves of finger millet exceed 20,000 tons. Families in Gutu now have a stable, dependable supply of food. This has been achieved without any external intervention or funding. The success of the Chinyika Communities Development Project was grounded in participatory research, community engagement and local ownership. The narrative is about much more than switching from one crop to another. A stable supply of food – and behavioural change – has imbued farmers with the confidence to pursue various income-generating activities. In Gutu, finger millet has been the key to the emergence of a diversified and innovative family farming system.
Evidence suggests that a regular and reliable transfer of cash to households with orphaned and vulnerable children has a strong and positive effect on child outcomes. However, conditional cash transfers are considered by some as particularly intrusive and the question on whether or not to apply conditions to cash transfers is an issue of controversy. This article sets out to investigate the overall buy-in of conditions by different stakeholders and to identify pathways that contribute to an acceptability of conditions. The article draws on data from a cluster-randomized trial of a community-led cash transfer programme in Manicaland, eastern Zimbabwe. The study found a significant and widespread acceptance of conditions primarily because they were seen as fair and a proxy for good parenting or guardianship. In a socio-economic context where child grants are not considered a citizen entitlement, community members and cash transfer recipients valued the conditions associated with these grants. The community members interpreted the fulfilment of the conditions as a proxy for achievement and merit, enabling them to participate rather than sit back as passive recipients of aid.