Poverty policies or policy poverty? Paradoxes of economic reform and occupational displacement in sub-Saharan Africa

Dr Deborah Fahy Bryceson, senior lecturer in development studies, University of Birmingham, and African Studies Centre

A ‘new poverty agenda’ has coalesced which encompasses the Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty by 50% in 2015 and a new methodological focus on the qualitative and participatory assessment of poverty. A growing international consensus on how to reduce poverty has surfaced which includes national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and an array of instruments for delivering aid, reducing debt and results-based management by national governments linked to donor inputs. Poverty reduction efforts are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa where welfare indicators have deteriorated throughout the last two decades. In light of recent pan-African findings arising from the Afrika-studiecentrum’s Deagrarianization and Rural Employment (DARE) research programme, the logic and viability of the new poverty reduction approach in rural areas are examined. Can deepening poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa be subverted by participatory poverty assessments, PRSPs and the Millennium Development Goal? Are the labour displacement effects of structural adjustment and trade liberalization being countered in the new approach? How will rural Africans be earning their livelihood in the year 2015 when poverty is scheduled to be substantially reduced?