POVERTY REVISITEDDominic Liche

The harsh reality of poverty in the world

Despite the annoying but smartly presented statistics on world poverty by international institutions like the world bank and the United Nations, there are 1.4 billion people in the world, 870 million people are chronically undernourished, 22 thousand children die every day due to poverty, 40 million people are living with HIV and/or AIDS, 1.6 billion people are living without electricity, people lack access to clean water, people have no access to education, 1 billion children out of 2.2 billion children in the world are living in poverty, infant and maternal mortality rates continue to be very high, the reality of poverty continues to be harsher and worse without much hope for an escape especially in the world’s poorest nations. What makes poverty a harsher reality is the fact that at the moment we have adequate food, medicines, resources and technologies to eradicate poverty, yet it persists and the division between the rich and the poor continues to widen.

Despite the populist approaches to eradicating poverty that have included the curse of some countries being in certain prone geographical areas, lack of adequate resources especially in Africa, Latin America and Asia, lack of adequate knowledge by most national leaders to apply workable solutions to eradicating poverty, need for aid and debt to eradicate poverty, eradicating corruption and misapplication of public funds, and the much talked about political will to fight poverty, the rule of law and the so-called good governance tenets; none of these tools seem to be working very well to eradicating poverty. Countries that are making significant strides to reducing the numbers of poor people in their countries like Brazil, China, Ghana are showing that the traditional approaches to poverty eradication might not be working. Poverty is a problem that goes beyond historical concerns (such as those of slavery or colonisation), ignorance, resources, geographical locations, and political will of politicians. Where the world’s poor will turn to, nobody really knows and in most countries these poor people litter (not in a derogatory way) our streets as beggars and hustlers desperately looking for help of any kind.

The poor continue to go without food, water, shelter, and other basic necessities. The poor continue to lack good health, education and other social amenities. The poor continue to be stifled of their freedom to be who they want to be and their voices to speak out their options. The poor die of hunger, disease, ignorance even in the midst of plenty. The poor in any case continue to remain a statistic only thought of in figures, percentages, datum lines, smart graphs, and powerpoint presentations. They have no human face. They are unknown to the worlds’ policy makers and leaders. This is what could even make leaders even think there is no poverty in their countries. Such leaders lock themselves in a caecum of a world where they hardly encounter the poor.

In rethinking about poverty, one cannot avoid but bring out a couple of issues that seem to continuously be a problem in making significant strides to fighting it. Let us turn to a couple of these issues.

Politicising every aspect of life

Partisan politics in most countries continue to be the order of the day. In most democracies, partisan politics remain the mainstay of democracy, yet in many other countries, such politics coupled with tribalism continue to be a curse to the general population. In many countries where there is war, partisan politics play a big role and in many of these cases, it is the politicising almost every aspect of the lives of the citizens that is a huge problem. Jobs and job security, rule of law, functions of governance institutions, religion, civil society, security of individuals are all politicised to an extent where those against those in government or in power continue to suffer at the hands of their leaders.

Popular slogans such as, “you will not see development in this area unless you vote for the government of the day” go beyond mere electoral fraudulent rhetoric to actually determining how development agendas are delivered. When economics, governance, media, civil society are badly politicised, it is hard for anyone to really look at the needs and problems of the poor with the aim of lifting such people out of poverty. The poor become an assert for political parties that can use them for whatever ends they want without thinking about the dignity and human worth of such people.

Fraudulent Leaders

For most people and international development organisations, development and poverty reduction is a very feasible agenda and in most cases, such people and organisations have workable solutions, no matter how trivial or bitter, towards poverty reduction. From mosquito nets to fighting disease, to having sustainable debt levels, to being economically independent, to using innovation to end poverty to infusing political will or incentives in nation state leaders, solutions are available for any wise leader to shop from. Yet our leaders fail to capitalise on these widely available solutions to the problem of poverty. As Acemoglu and Robinson asserted in their book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, "poor countries are poor not because of their geographies or cultures, or because their leaders do not know which policies will enrich their citizens. Poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose." In any case the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership award shows that our leaders are beyond par in taking democracy and the needs and aspirations of their people seriously.

It seems that our leaders especially in poor, least developed, undeveloped, and non-viable states do have a political will, and that will is to safeguard their own selfish (not just their own self) interests and that of a few elites in society. The poor stop mattering to the leaders just after the poll results are enounced. The poor begin mattering at the next poll and everything, even bogus and unrealistic promises, will be done and promised to convince the poor that leadership is poor-centric. Leaders in most of these poor nations know very well what they are doing and they know that their policies, plans and decisions will not significantly reduce poverty. For some, they deliberately keep the majority of their citizens poor and illiterate so that they can continue being passive and easily managed. For others, they deliberately make decisions that are rich- and elite-centric knowing very well the negative consequences to the poor and the future generations of the poor people.

Yes, such leaders know what they are doing and they freely choose to impoverish their citizens and sometimes with impunity and arrogance.

Lack of use of technology to fight poverty

The evidence is everywhere for us to see, that using technology has significantly reduced sicknesses, unnecessary deaths, and poverty. Technology has improved the quality of life for many in the world. Yet humanity remains too cautious and naive to use newer technologies to further improve the lives of the people. Technology although is so costly and inaccessible to the general masses, it has the tendency of quickly being cheap and accessible to the masses as newer technologies are developed. Hybrid food seeds, pesticides, herbicides, artificial hormones, genetic modification, high yield crops, nutrient induced foods are all available now even for the poorest of nations to shop from to improve the lives of their citizens. Calestous Juma has documented very well how poverty or some of the aspects of poverty could be dealt with using technology in his book, The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa. When rich countries are busy harnessing technology to their positive benefits, poor countries continue to be too cautionary of these technologies citing the cautionary principle.

As much as the cautionary principle is helpful in avoiding negative effects where one is not so sure about the effects of a principle, plan or commodity, a consistently cautionary approach leads to non-

development because, most newer strategies involve substantial amount of risk. Intelligent risks in technology is a prerequisite to using technology to end or realistically eradicate poverty. In some countries, where there is very undemocratic cultures, a technological culture has helped significantly to unlock bottlenecks to development and poverty eradication.

Being locked in unhealthy and fruit religious beliefs and practices

Poverty and religion seems to go hand in hand. At the apex of poverty, religion and religious beliefs thrive. When traditional religions that centre on an all powerful, all loving, all knowing, ever present, and just God, lose their meaning and grounds, newer religions and sects that are evil-centric and centred on wealth arise. Such religions seem to find answers in all people’s problems in two major ways, first, poverty and other problems as a result of satanic and possession by the evil one, second, poverty and other problems as a result of a fallout with God such that these people need deliverance and reconnection with God.

As much as religion is good in many fronts, such “fraudulent” religions and sects have the effect of diverting people’s attention from the real issues that affect them to blaming all on Satan and God. Poverty caused by their own laziness, poverty caused by leaders, poverty caused by bad decisions, plans and policies, poverty cause by lack of adequate and intelligent use of technology, poverty that is caused by some international organisations whose interest is only to trap small nation states in debt and dependency, all tend to be blamed on religion. Some poor people are even subjected to deliverance services and bogus prophecies in the hope of unlocking their unluck.

Conclusion

As has been indicated by many authors including myself in previous articles on poverty, poverty remains illusive, but the way out of poverty for many seems real and workable. The way out of poverty is clearly ditching solutions that are not working and adopting workable solutions. Many nations that are the poorest ironically are very rich in resources at hand, not just potentiality. When one considers some populated Nordic countries that have little or no natural resources to most countries of Africa that are rich in natural resources, it beats one’s reason as to why countries of Africa are locked in poverty. Even when some authors claim natural resources are a curse that has continued to plunge citizens of many nations to poverty, disease and war, natural resources themselves are not a curse buy leaders who knowingly and selfishly make decisions that perpetuate poverty. Leaders in such countries continue to see themselves as demagogues and untouchable by their people to an extent that their people’s voices are robbed so that they are not reminded of their aim in government.

In any case, technology could be that much needed missing link to unlocking so many people’s poverty traps.

Dominic Liche is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Applied Ethics at the University of Zambia.