Poor and Development

Poverty reduction as an overall objective of the global development industry is not new. The only problem is that so far it has not really worked. Despite several decades of economic growth and huge development aid disbursements, the number of countries the United Nations calls “least developed” has in fact nearly doubled since 1971, from 25 to 49. In the last decade and despite all development efforts-not even one country was able to graduate from this group to a higher income level, maybe with the exception of Botswana. Meanwhile. Poverty reduction has generated its own history. This programme has covered a wide range of approaches starting from the world Bank’s small farmers strategies in the 1970’s via the costly structural adjustment policies of the 1980’s to the recent poverty reduction strategies of the 1990’s. Once more, the next development decade has written “Attacking Poverty” on its banner. It seems that something must have gone wrong along the way. What lessons have been learnt from previous experience? Have they been factored into the new set of policies? Were there possibly some fundamental flaws which were overlooked, and can better results be expected during the next period? Or do the many failures and disappointments demonstrate that there is some systemic “resistance to change” by those in power in the least developed countries and perhaps also by the poor themselves?