Shifting the development paradigm: the poor are the solution, not the problem
11 August 2008
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There are three serious problems with the first Millennium Development Goal’s aim of halving the proportion of people who live in poverty and hunger by 2015. The first is that it is highly unlikely to be achieved in sub-Saharan Africa, where – rather than diminishing – poverty and ultra-poverty continue to broaden and deepen. The second is that it focuses policy attention on people living in big countries nearer the poverty line (like India and China) rather than on people living in small countries far below it (like most of Africa), so that maximising ‘bang per buck’ in a push to achieve the global MDG logically means neglecting Africa and pushing resources at programmes in Asia that might lift hundreds of thousands of (less poor) people out of poverty. And the third is that it is a wholly inadequate goal in the first place, since, even if it were achieved, it would still leave 800 million people worldwide (the unlucky “other” half) in grinding poverty.
The orthodox development paradigm of the past three decades has manifestly failed. This view held that the focus of development should be on the productive sectors. This would bring economic growth, which in turn would pull people out of poverty. Social safety nets, targeted at the poorest and most vulnerable, would provide short-term, stop-gap support to those who did not immediately benefit from the fruits of economic growth; and donors would stand by with emergency assistance – often their own unwanted surpluses in the form of food aid – to help in “emergencies” where even such safety nets failed. The many flaws in this way of thinking have been cruelly exposed.
What is needed now is to turn the traditional development paradigm on its head. Rather than seeing the residual poor as the problem to be overcome, development should see the poor as the solution, and as the best focus for development funding. The new development paradigm should make comprehensive, universal social protection its priority. Empowering the poor, enabling them to invest and allowing them the confidence to take risks will itself foster economic growth. This in turn will reduce poverty and the long-term cost of providing social protection; it will lessen the need for emergency assistance and will free up donor resources to contribute to the reduction of chronic poverty rather than to unproductive disaster response.
A focus on social protection will tilt the balance of responsibility for development from donors to national governments, and will have ramifications on the accountability of governments and on democracy. Let us look at each of these in turn.
During the last three decades, the development agenda in most of sub-Saharan Africa has been driven by the ideologies (not always consistent) of different donor and development agencies. Throughout the period of “structural adjustment”, these international bodies had the upper hand, because they were able to extract conditions in exchange for food and funding. The focus was on large-scale projects, because international donors can much more easily fund infrastructure, airports, schools and clinics, than transfer small sums of money on a regular basis to individuals or households. They raised a number of specious arguments against comprehensive social protection in an African context:
- “it is not affordable in low-income countries”;
- “it must be targeted at the very poorest”;
- “we need more evidence that it works”;
- “social assistance should be left to NGOs”
- “such ‘charity’ is a luxury”
- “it is not a social or economic priority”.
But this conveniently, if hypocritically, overlooks the fact that the West’s own experience directly contradicts each one of these edicts:
- “it is not affordable” – European countries introduced social protection when they were poor, not when they were rich;
- “it must be targeted” – the programmes they pioneered were generally universal, such as old age pensions and child benefits, not poverty-targeted;
- “we need more evidence” – the schemes were initiated not on the basis of extensive piloting and rigorous evidence, but on gut-feeling and conviction (and they themselves provide sufficient evidence for African governments to know that they work);
- “leave it to NGOs” – OECD countries made social security a function of the State precisely because they saw the weaknesses, inconsistencies and incoherence of leaving it to disparate, inchoate charities;
- “such ‘charity’ is a luxury” – social security is an obligation, not a charity; and a right, not a luxury;
- “it is not a priority” – social protection was not altruistic: the motivation was the pressing need to quell latent civil disturbance and to spread purchasing power for the emerging agricultural and industrial mass-markets.
Donors and the development community should not block social protection with spurious objections. On the contrary, they have a moral obligation to help the poor in developing countries: all of them, not just half; and now, not by 2015!
But, in any case, primary responsibility for the provision of social protection should be with the State. Under the old development model, governments in sub-Saharan Africa – even if they had wanted to – would have been prevented from exercising this responsibility by the financial strictures of the international community: witness the IMF’s opposition to Lesotho’s old age pension. In most cases, however, they did not even want to: “emergency” response was seen as an international responsibility, funded by external resources, whereas the provision of ongoing social protection required significant domestic funding and long-term budgetary commitment; and of course food aid and strategic grain reserves provided rich pickings for corruption and patronage.
A number of factors are now weakening the power of international donors over African governments: the discrediting (and failure) of the unbridled economic liberalisation approach; the reduced availability of loans (and now food aid) as tools for leverage; and, above all, the availability of less “discretionary” funding from China and the Middle East. Governments are taking advantage of this freedom to introduce (or re-introduce) populist pro-poor policies that fly in the face of orthodox prescriptions, such as the old age pensions in Lesotho and Swaziland, and the input subsidy programmes in Malawi and Zambia. This is good, and donors should now stop using what remains of their influence to push for poverty-targeted approaches … which plays straight into the hands of existing patronage networks.
This brings us to the role that social protection can play in enhancing democracy and strengthening the social compact between State and citizen. Because, even if poverty targeting were technically feasible and administratively achievable at national scale in Africa – and all of the evidence suggests that in such contexts of widespread poverty it is not – it remains open to political abuse, and perpetuates the patterns of patronage that undermine equitable development. These are so deeply entrenched that it is almost impossible to bypass them – as evidenced by a recent study of the Mchinji social cash transfer pilot in Malawi, which looked in detail at actual household income across the community, and found that not a single household from the lowest-income decile was selected by the community as being in the eligible 10% most in need of receiving a transfer!
Universal access to comprehensive social protection, on the other hand, when properly implemented, is far less open to favouritism and manipulation. It can also lead to much greater levels of political participation by the poor. The old age pensions in Swaziland and Lesotho, and the input subsidy in Malawi, have become “positively politicised” as key election issues. Civil society becomes actively engaged (as it is, for example, in South Africa), so that the drive towards universalism represents an engine for greater voice and more active participation by citizens in government, thus fostering democracy. Social protection engenders good governance just as much as the reverse.
Social protection should not be seen as a last resort, nor as an optional extra; but as the bedrock for democracy and equitable development in Africa. To recognise this will result in far more productive relationships between donors and governments, and between the State and its citizens. And acting on the premise that the poor are the solution rather than the problem will generate a level of development that has been shamefully elusive for the past thirty years.
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