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The Forum > Article Comments > Inclusive and equitable growth for poverty reduction in Africa > Comments

Inclusive and equitable growth for poverty reduction in Africa : Comments

By Babatunde Omilola, published 20/7/2011

For countries where poverty is wide spread, it will take unacceptably long time for poverty to be reduced through the trickling down of the benefits of growth to the poor.

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..."To be comprehensive, capacity development for improving the economic governance and efficiency of existing institutions must root out corruption"...

...And until then, overseas aid remains a band-aid...
Posted by diver dan, Wednesday, 20 July 2011 9:01:21 AM
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“Dr. Babatunde Omilola is the Regional Practice Leader for Poverty Reduction and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Service Centre for Eastern and Southern Africa.”
Surely someone working under such an important title, would have done enough homework to be aware of the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo during 1994.
At this conference the international community acknowledged that the fundamental need for advancing human society, especially in developing countries, was to address excessive population growth.
It issued the following statement as one of the necessary steps: “All countries are called upon to strive to make reproductive health accessible through the primary health-care system to all individuals of appropriate age as soon as possible and no later than 2105. Such care should include, inter alia: family planning counselling, information, education, communication and services;--.”
However, in his article, Dr Omilola totally neglects any reference to the Conference or the value of its basic recommendation. It is not unreasonable to ask why, because this act of neglect perpetuates the problems under discussion.
In comparatively affluent Australia, each fertile woman currently produces about two children for upbringing - with education, training, and health needs; yet we seem to have difficulty in providing these essentials, and have deficiencies in all these areas.
Women in the more deprived parts of Africa , without assistance to change their circumstance, will continue with current fertility rates of about 6 children. Dr Omilola, by ignoring this fact, helps to ensure further social desperation.
Posted by colinsett, Wednesday, 20 July 2011 11:45:41 AM
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I find this type of article incredibly difficult to read. There is so much "committee-speak", and so little genuine thought, feeling or understanding.

"Achievement of the MDG1 targets will be more or less effective for each country depending on the quality of its investment and the extent to which growth is pro-poor. In addition, even pro-poor policies might fail to address childhood malnutrition, which would cause the hunger indicator to lag behind the poverty indicator, as is the case of many African countries."

Depending on how you view it, that paragraph is either terminally simplistic, or utterly devoid of purpose.

"...it is important to look at the structure and quality of growth so as to make growth inclusive in terms of broadening both the sources of growth and the benefits of growth."

I am sure it wasn't the writer's intention to cause his readers' eyes to glaze over with terminal boredom at the sentence after sentence of the bleedin' obvious. When oh when, would we reach something concrete?

Ah, the first "suggestion".

>>It is important to focus strongly on providing tools, information and in-depth analysis that are required to successfully undertake serious monitoring and evaluation of the progress and impact of global development challenges on poor countries.<<

Good grief.

Here's another "suggestion".

>>It is also crucial to urgently expand investments for social protection measures, sustainable livelihoods for families and, more importantly, broad-based policies, strategies, and resources.<<

Has none of this been tried before? If not, why not? That would make a story.

Or maybe it is me.

I'm missing the subtlety in this, that is in effect saying "how about we start sending aid in such a form, that will ensure that the various despots and their families are unable take the lion's share, before it reaches its intended destination".

In which case, why does the author feel unable to say it out loud? It is after all the question that bugs the citizens of most donor nations.
Posted by Pericles, Wednesday, 20 July 2011 2:48:04 PM
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Have a look at this map of world poverty... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

Basically the more red, the more poverty... But the surprise is that it is a map of FERTILITY - how many children are being born.

You know how our government seems unable to fund hospitals, schools and roads, and this is with our population failing to produce enough children to replace ourselves... imagine the problems of fundiong these essential services if the population was not declining, but trippling every twenty years... no wonder they are poor. Worse than schools and hospitals, they somehow they also need to find more farmland too!

50 years ago, perhaps we could have ended poverty. But now there are so many more poor that the problem is so much bigger. For example, there are 60 million shanty-town dwellers in India alone, and only 20 million Australians... Let alone Indonesia, the Pacific Islands, New Guinea... What about Africa? Sth America? etc etc...

Why is China becomming so rich and powerfull? The one-child policy. It means they can finally afford to catch up with the infastructire and education that nations need to get ahead and build wealth.

I don't like the 'one child policy', but Thailand and surging Iran (Think nuclear power) also have zero-population growth due to marketing, free contraception and free choice. It's not really the feminist idea that educating women reduces population growth (think Iran, they're not keen on educating women)...

...continued...
Posted by partTimeParent, Thursday, 21 July 2011 11:05:26 AM
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...continued

Too high population growth = poverty.

What succeds is explaining to people that too many kids leads to poverty, and long-lasting free contraceptive implants. Eventually compulsary education and urbanisation also drive down birthrates, because they make kids expensive. This tends to come along at the same time as education for all, which creates the feminist myth that only educating women decreases birthrates... it does, but educating women can only come once birthrates start declining. Put the fertile egg before the feminist chook.

On the other hand, in Australia we have an 'aging population'. The problem is not an 'aging' population, it is that we are suiciding... failing to produce enough kids to replace ourselves.

Here we need to give tax reductions for kids so middle class parents can afford the kids we want. Those on welfare are pumping out kids like there is no tomorrow because of the welfare bribes to have lots of kids.

Here we need to give tax reductions for kids so that middle class parents can afford the kids we want. For example income tax splitting between the parents and kids. Divide family income by number of people before tax. For example in a four-person family instead of dad paying a heap of tax on $100,000 and then supporting his kids on what's left, each person pays tax on $25,000.

Meanwhile at the other end, those on low incomes are pressured by overgenerous payments into single-parenthood and bribed into having more kids than they can look after, because this maximises their income. And single parents get bigger bribes than married ones.

Also making divorce fairer, because Australian men don't want to become dads... because they are afraid of having their kids stolen by divorce lawyers. Too many women miss out on the families they want because men realise that the costs of divorce are more than the benefits of marriage.
PartTimeParent@pobox.com
Posted by partTimeParent, Thursday, 21 July 2011 11:22:13 AM
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To me the article seems to me to be about how to use the economic growth.
The whole article falls over because we are now entering an era of zero growth.
Africa with the only growth in sight being population can only look
forward to an increasing disaster and starvation spreading accross
the continent.
Posted by Bazz, Monday, 25 July 2011 9:36:37 AM
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