The Poverty Debate

1. The Poverty Debate

2. Introduction • Making of the Modern World • Wealth and impoverishment of nations? • Politics of equality but economic inequality? • What does modernisation look like when viewed from elsewhere in the world?

3. Definitions • A statistical measurement? • ‘The Poor are not Us’ • Disempowerment • ‘Look at everything and write what you see. What you see is poverty.’

4. Disaggregating Poverty • Structural poverty • Long-term poverty • Conjunctural poverty • Poverty as a temporary condition • Land-rich poverty • Land-scarce poverty

5. Poverty in 19th Century Africa • Moral economy • Kikuyu • Exchange of land and labour • Exchange of opportunity for former wealth and recognition of right of wealthy to rule in the present • Land-rich & conjunctural poverty • Poor silenced • Poor dependent on elite felt no obligation when ties broke down • Crisis of colonial conquest

6. Poverty in Colonial Africa • Colonies run for the economic benefit of colonial powers rather than the good of subjects • Limits on competition • Settler colonies • Cash crop revolution • Marketing boards • Creation of land-scarcity • Limited mobility • Native Reserves

7. Poverty in Colonial Africa • Creation of urban poverty • Labour migration • Fixed wages • Post-1945 • Expansion of structural poverty • Poverty and protest • Mau Mau

8. Poverty in Post-Colonial Africa • Promise of redistribution at heart of nationalism • Nationalist parties as coalitions of elites and grassroots • Influence of left on nationalism • Cold War

9. Post-Colonial Poverty • Differing policies • Ghana • Tanzania • Kenya • How different? • Marketing boards • Rapid urbanisation • Similar outcomes • Improvements in living standards • Crisis of the 1970s

10. Post-Colonial Poverty • Competing explanations • Dependency theory • Walter Europe, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa • Solution • Self-sufficiency • Tanzania • Capital shortage • Need to fill gap between necessary investment & domestic savings • Solution • Greater integration into global economy

11. Post-Colonial Poverty • Structural adjustment • Liberalisation of economies • Reduction of state involvement • Increase in urban poverty? • Decrease of state employment • End of price-fixing of foodstuffs • Inflation • Privatisation • Decrease in rural poverty? • Prices set according to global markets • Collapse of redistributive politics

12. Conclusion • Did poverty worsen or improve in modern world? • Change from conjunctural to structural poverty? • View from periphery very different from that from industrialised countries • Need for imperialism to be incorporated more fully into economic history