From Africa Renewal, Vol.20 #3 (October 2006), page 6 By Gumisai Mutume “For successful poverty reduction, African countries have to be in the driver’s seat,” says World Bank Africa Region Vice-President Gobind Nankani. “Africans know best where the shoe pinches. They should craft their own poverty-reduction strategies based on national realities.”
But many countries in Africa are hampered by the inability of the state to deliver social services. Development policies followed in many African countries during the 1980s emphasized macroeconomic prudence, which translated into a reduction in the size and role of the public sector. In Zimbabwe for example, the cabinet in 1995 ordered all ministries to cut staff by 40 per cent, in line with the conditions of a World Bank loan. Weakened by similar cutbacks, labour ministries in many African countries found themselves with no capacity to plan or direct employment-generation programmes.
There is now a growing realization among African policymakers and their external development partners that the state needs to be rebuilt so that it can play an active role in development.
Mr. Nankani notes that African governments could benefit from directing investment into rural areas. Two-thirds of Africa’s population lives in the countryside and poverty is predominantly a rural phenomenon. The rural poor work in small-scale, subsistence farming and non-farm activities such as agro-processing. Governments could therefore promote policies that increase agricultural productivity and growth. These may include policies to raise the quality of labour, through training, and to improve the productivity of land. Rural industrialization programmes could create jobs in particularly disadvantaged communities.
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