AFRICA: ENDING POVERTY DEMANDS BOLDNESS TO IMPLEMENT SOLUTIONS

Although the poor can be found in every country, increasingly, poverty has an African face.  Even as the global population grew, the number of people living in extreme poverty drastically declined by almost 70 percent, from 2 billion in 1990 to about 0.65 billion in 2019.  Over the last four decades, China performed a modern-day miracle by lifting 800 million citizens from poverty.  However, in the same period, extreme poverty increased in Sub-Saharan Africa by 43 percent, from 271.5 million in 1990 to 389 million in 2019.

Poverty and its causes continue to confound scholars and policymakers.  This point is not for want of scholarship on why Africa is poor.  Indeed, a recent book by Charlie Robertson situates the argument on education, electricity, and fertility rates.  He suggested that a nation cannot take off unless it has at least a 40 percent literacy rate and can’t industrialise without a 70 to 80 percent literacy rate.  Furthermore, nations can’t industrialise without electricity.  Nigeria will maintain the shameful moniker – “Poverty Capital of the World” – as long as its electricity consumption per capita remains as low as 140 kWh/ha (2021), almost three times lower than the average for Sub-Saharan Africa.  Similarly, high fertility rates, as seen in Africa, mean that the continent can’t put away enough financial savings to reduce its cost of capital and improve its ability to fund enterprise. Several other scholars, including the recent book by Yasheng Huang, suggest that mass education is the building block for national development, which is needed to address poverty.

While several governments may agree with these arguments, many choose ineffective pathways to achieve their development goals.  One of the significant challenges is the disconnect between the governments and the people.  The policy wonks sit in their ivory towers and divine what is best for the poor but rarely engage with them to figure out how best to help them exit the quicksand.  In “Intellectuals and Society,” Thomas Sowell forcefully argued that these intellectuals have, on average, done worse for society, especially when they do not engage with those their ideas are supposed to help.

Take, for instance, “free” public education.  Several intellectuals continue to push this model as effective for achieving mass education.  While this idea is appealing, mainly because it wins votes, it has failed to deliver the required success.  The inherent principal-agent problem (between the government and the public school administrators and workers) results in a misalignment of incentives.  James Tooley, in his book, “The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World’s Poorest People Are Educating Themselves,” provides evidence from Nigeria, Ghana, India, China, etc., on how free public schools consistently failed to deliver results.  These solutions came from talking to the poor.  His arguments for private schools for educating the poor provide new investment frontiers and an exciting solution to the perennial problem.  Nobel Laureate Professor Michael Kremer’s recent review of one such investment in Nairobi (Kenya) should elicit interest from governments across the continent.

The 2023 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty calls for universal access to decent work and social protection to uphold human dignity for all people.  Several African governments genuinely desire to achieve these lofty goals.  Yet, they continue to approach it the wrong way.  They rely on “intellectuals” who may not invest enough time to understand the challenges or who fail to engage with the poor as they divine the potential solutions.  Actively engaging with various stakeholders is critical to avoiding cognitive biases. These engagements provide an opportunity to “learn and understand.”

Africa has innovative, homegrown, and evidence-based solutions to its pressing challenges.  A 2015 paper by Patricia Agupusi and Chukwumerije Okereke argues that the challenge could be a lack of “political and collective will” to implement the solutions.  At Nextier, we continue to encourage our partners at the national and sub-national levels to steel their backbones and implement these solutions.  Therein lies the answers to the myriad development challenges, including poverty.

If you want to learn more about how Nextier contributes to addressing Africa’s poverty challenge, please check out our website: www.thenextier.com or email info@thenextier.com.

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