scholarly journals Decent Work and Poverty Reduction Strategies

2011 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Hughes ◽  
Nigel Haworth
Keyword(s):  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Sustainable Growth ◽  
Washington Consensus ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Decent Work ◽  
Policy Coherence ◽  
Reduction Strategies ◽  
International Macroeconomic Policy ◽  
Structural Adjustment Programmes

This article examines how the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Decent Work agenda integration into poverty reduction strategies has provided the wherewithal for closer cooperation with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It begins by discussing multilateral approaches to poverty reduction and identifying criticisms of structural adjustment programmes and the policy prescriptions of the Washington Consensus as key prompts for closer cooperation with the ILO. The article examines the development of the ILO and identifies the role that successive Director Generals have played in repositioning it as a key player in multilateral approaches to poverty reduction. The complex nature of cooperation between the ILO and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) is acknowledged and discussed. While the Washington Consensus has not been abandoned, analytical shifts within the IFIs, including greater acknowledgment of the role labour market institutions can make in sustainable growth and development, have prompted closer integration between employment and social policies and international macroeconomic policy strategies. At the heart of this engagement lies the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda and the demand for greater policy coherence among multilateral organizations in poverty reduction. The integration of Decent Work into IFI Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) is identified as a key platform for these activities. The article describes the ILO strategy for integrating Decent Work into the PRSP process and examines the criticisms this strategy has attracted. In highlighting the importance of worker voice in the national delivery of poverty reduction strategies, the article concludes by promoting the need for representative bodies to have the necessary organization and skills to engage with and implement poverty reduction strategies. For Decent Work and poverty reduction to succeed, this need is of both a national and international concern. Such challenges loom large in future engagement between the ILO and the IFIs.

The Poverty of Development: Prolegomenon to a Critique of Development Policy in Africa

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John F.E. Ohiorhenuan
Keyword(s):  
Development Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Wrong Reason ◽  
Taking Charge ◽  
Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper ◽  
Poverty Reduction Strategy ◽  
The Right ◽  
Structural Adjustment Programmes

The focus on poverty reduction in Africa may be a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Undoubtedly, directly focusing on poverty as an integral part of macroeconomic policy making is essential and a welcome addition to the narrower prescriptions of structural adjustment programmes. But experience so far with Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSPJ raises the concern that, compared with structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), the real innovation of PRSPs is that they now prescribe, and set conditionalities on, process in addition to content. In consequence, it is difficult to sustain the argument that Africa is (finally) taking charge of its own destiny

African Science Fiction and the Planning Imagination

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Eatough
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Institutional Planning ◽  
Structural Adjustment Programs ◽  
Reduction Strategies ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

AbstractThis essay examines the recent rise in popularity of science fiction in Africa. I argue that this growth can be traced to key shifts within the logic of structural adjustment programs. Over the last twenty years, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have begun to place a heightened emphasis on “poverty reduction strategies” (or PRSs). These PRSs have taken the two organizations’ longstanding commitment to free-market policies and adapted them to the rhetoric of social and economic justice by suggesting that “sustainable” welfare programs can only be constructed through the “long-term” benefits of well-planned “institutions.”As I show, this vision of long-term development has encouraged a move toward fictional forms capable of speaking to elongated temporal scales. Using Nnedi Okorafor’s novelLagoonas my primary example, I investigate how sci-fi narratives have struggled to represent social agency within thelongue duréeof institutional planning.

4. Neoliberalism in Latin America and Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 78-100
Author(s):  
Manfred B. Steger ◽  
Ravi K. Roy
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Financial Assistance ◽  
Washington Consensus ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Neoliberal Policies ◽  
Structural Adjustment Programmes

‘Neoliberalism in Latin America and Africa’ explores the influence of the Washington Consensus in shaping neoliberal policies in Latin America and Africa. From the perspective of the IMF or the World Bank, market-oriented reform in this region was needed to produce sustained economic growth. To that end, they linked their financial assistance to ‘structural adjustment programmes’ anchored in one-size-fits-all economic prescriptions. However, not all markets 'work' in exactly the same way and according to the same rules. In many instances, the neoliberal remedies applied to Latin America and Africa were microeconomic strategies that failed to account for the unique social, political, and cultural contexts in which they were enforced.

Rich and poor countries

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-182
Author(s):  
Paul Spicker
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
The Self ◽  
Washington Consensus ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
Reduction Strategies ◽  
Development Goals

The position of poor countries reflects international relationships governing economic exchange, debt, and markets. No less important are the dominance of ideas from abroad, such as the Washington Consensus, and the role of international organisations in enforcing its principles. Policies have shifted from the self-direction of the Poverty Reduction Strategies towards the top-down priorities represented by the Sustainable Development Goals.

scholarly journals Microfinance Institutions and Poverty Reduction: A Cross Regional Analysis

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (4I-II) ◽  
pp. 371-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Attiya Yasmin Javid ◽  
Afsheen Abrar
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Regional Analysis ◽  
Microfinance Institutions ◽  
Macroeconomic Performance ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Structural Adjustment Programmes

The alleviation of poverty is one of the most debated issues among the academicians and policy makers. From 1950s to 1980s the poverty reduction program has been based on increase the participation of poor into the economy by better macroeconomic performance. Though the poor part of population mostly engaged in informal sector1 is identified by researchers but has not become the part of economic models and government policy [Robinson (2001)]. Poverty reduction has been institutionalised in 1944 when World Bank was set up. The World Bank worked through governments and institutions by giving loans to developing countries called structural-adjustment programmes. These programmes were highly unsuccessful, created dependence on aid with little help to poor part of societies [Murduch (1999) and Diop, et al. (2007)].

Austerity in Africa

Focaal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (83) ◽  
pp. 51-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Pfeiffer
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Social Services ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Public Health Systems ◽  
Structural Adjustment Programs ◽  
International Ngos ◽  
Reduction Strategies

Austerity across Africa has been operationalized through World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs since the 1980s, later rebranded euphemistically as poverty reduction strategies in the late 1990s. Austerity’s constraints on public spending led donors to a “civil society” focus in which NGOs would fill gaps in basic social services created by public sector contraction. One consequence was large-scale redirection of growing foreign aid flows away from public services to international NGOs. Austerity in Africa coincides with the emergence of what some anthropologists call “audit cultures” among donors. Extraordinary data collection infrastructures are demanded from recipient organizations in the name of transparency. However, the Mozambique experience described here reveals that these intensive audit cultures serve to obscure the destructive effects of NGO proliferation on public health systems.

scholarly journals Gender Exploitation: from Structural Adjustment Policies to Poverty Reduction Strategies

2003 ◽  
Vol 42 (4II) ◽  
pp. 669-694 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khadija Ali
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Adjustment Policies ◽  
Reduction Strategies ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Policy Measures

The aim of this paper is to review the existing empirical research concerning women’s exploitation as a result of policy measures imposed by the World Bank and the IMF, particularly under Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs). The central argument here is that SAPs have not been successful in achieving their basic objectives of ‘adjusting’ the economies instead, these policies have created severe social problems for the human beings, particularly for the poor and middle-income groups, in the countries where they (SAPs) have been implemented [Beneria and Feldman (1992); Cornia, Jolly and Stewart (1987); Floro (1995); Messkoub (1996) Moser (1989)]. Among these groups, although all members have to mobilise their efforts to support households so as to cope with the economic crisis, women have to bear an unequal share of this burden [Agrawal (1992); Ali (2000); Beneria (1992, 1995); Cagatay (1995); Chant (1991); Elson (1991, 1992a); Feldman (1992); Floro (1995); Reilly and Gorden (1995); McFarren (1992); Moser (1992); Perez-Aleman (1992); Sahn and Haddad (1991); Safa and Antrobus (1992); Stewart (1992); Trip (1992)].

scholarly journals Decolonial Turns and Development Discourse in Africa: Reflections on Masculinity and Pan-Africanism

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-92
Author(s):  
Ama Biney
Keyword(s):  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
World Order ◽  
Development Discourse ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
Poverty Reduction Strategy ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
A Site ◽  
Challenging Question ◽  
Structural Adjustment Programmes

The Euro-American hegemonic control of epistemology has produced the current modern and patriarchal world order underpinned by a Manichean outlook in which Africa is considered a site of inferior people enveloped by lack of development. This article deploys the concept of decolonial turns to understand how Euro-American thought has produced ideas of development within which Africa emerges as lacking development. It posits that Euro-American discourse of development has continued to inform those processes that resulted in the impoverishment of the African continent. The discourse was articulated in the guise of modernization theory of the 1960s and now exists in the current Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers that have currently replaced the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) of the 1980s and 1990s. The challenging question from a decolonial perspective for this article is whether pan-Africanism of the 21st century is able to provide the intellectual counter-weight to Euro-American epistemological domination. The article also delves deeper into question of masculinity and patriarchy that also contribute to poverty in Africa.

scholarly journals The Effects of Poverty Reduction Strategies on Artisanal Fishing in Ghana: The Case of Keta Municipality

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mawunyo Dzidza ◽  
Ian Jackson ◽  
Ametefee K. Normanyo ◽  
Michael Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Systematic Sampling ◽  
Artisanal Fishing ◽  
Adjustment Program ◽  
Reduction Strategies ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Government

This paper assesses the level of poverty in Ghana after three decades of successive implementation of numerous poverty reduction strategies including Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) by various governments of Ghana. The Keta municipality in the Volta region, where artisanal fishing thrives, was chosen as a representative sample of the whole country. The authors identified eleven artisanal fishing communities in the selected area using systematic sampling. Data were collected on household consumption patterns. This process was used to determine the profile of poverty using the latest upper poverty line of Ghana and the Greer and Thorbecke (1984) poverty formula. Research findings show that the various poverty alleviation methods implemented over three decades by the Government of Ghana, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) significantly failed as they have not produced any meaningful effect on poverty reduction in the sample area. Finally, this paper offers further suggestions regarding how this poverty gap may be bridged using alternative methods.

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