jctr.org.zm - Quarterly Bulletin; Bulletin 67

In this article, Dominic Liche proposes five logical steps that could substantially help in the fight against poverty. These are: elimination of bad leadership, maximising use of public resources with very minimal wastage, ending non-viable strategies in fight against poverty, developing rural areas, and obliging nations and leaders to account for use of public resources.

Poverty has been defined in many ways. I would like to believe that poverty is not a matter of definition but a matter of experience. Broadly speaking poverty is defined as a condition of not having sufficient resources or income to live one's life. This means not having access to crucial basic human needs of nutritious food, health, clean water, clothing and housing. Poverty threatens people’s health and could even lead to death. But most crucially, to realistically define poverty, we have to look at people’s experiences -- those who are not able to be in control of their lives -- meeting their basic needs, making independent decisions, participating and belonging to a community, having hopes and ambitions for the future, and for some, finding sources of income. When you look at what people experience and what people normally define (measure) as poverty, there is a gross difference because most of the times, poverty is defined in terms of income levels compared to what such an income can purchase. At the moment, extreme poverty means having a household income of less than US$1.25 per day and being poor is equivalent to living on less than a US$1.25 a day per person.

Based on this definition, many other figures (that are attractive to the global community) arise. For example, according to the World Bank (2005), 1.4 billion people live on less than US$1.25 a day and therefore poor. Further, over 3 billion people live on less than US$2.50 a day and at least 80% of humanity lives on less than US$10 a day. About 18 million people (10 million children and 8 million adults) die every year from avoidable, preventable, and poverty related causes. This means in a decade 180 million people die due to poverty. Even sadder, is the fact that the Gross Domestic Product of about 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people (not countries) in the world. The Global Issues (www.globalissues.org) further asserts that almost 1 billion people in 2000 were unable to read a book or sign their name; 1 billion children live in poverty (where about 10.6 million under-five children died in 2003 – 29,000 children a day). In most of Africa, more than half of nation’s populations live below the poverty line (US$1.25 a day) - in Zambia for example, it is estimated that 64% are poor; 75% in Kenya, 52% in Malawi.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that more than 25,000 children die every day around the world (this translates into about 1 child dying every 3.5 seconds, and over 9 million dying every year). Over 25 thousand persons die of hunger every year according to the United Nations.

There are more estimates given in the world that can easily be accessed in development reports, researches, and the internet. Although these statistics can be disputed, sound exaggerated, and sometimes contradict, they paint a very gloomy picture of poverty in the world -- sometimes a very helpless and hopeless picture. Although the statistics have often
discouraged development workers, experts and their students to look beyond figures to what people actually experience, experiences of actual persons (not figures because figures represent estimates based on incomes and GDP’s) that is gloomier. Consider a hungry and malnourished child but the mother cannot find any food, or a father who fails to provide for his family and yet he has to return home where the family is expectant, or a pregnant mother needing specialised treatment but none is available. The figures and experiences on poverty should motivate us, and not stunt us, to begin looking for solutions to end world poverty. Conventional and diplomatic ways are proving ineffective leading to shifting of goal posts by experts (especially the World Bank, United Nations, and International Monetary Fund) as to what can work to reduce poverty. The Millennium Development Goals will soon turn out to be such an infective measure (especially that they only consider cutting by half poverty levels - why not more?); Structural Adjustment Programmes is another.

This article seeks to propose five practical steps that can help end world poverty in a few decades to come. They are practical in that they can be done, and logically speaking they can work. They are steps in that they are in a lexical (lexicographic) order where step 1 should be done first before moving onto 2. Steps 3, 4, and 5 can be done concurrently but 1 is
a crucial starting point in ending world poverty. The assertion that world poverty can be eradicated comes from the realisation that our world has excess resources and that these resources are concentrated to just a few individuals and institutions. Also, most world resources are merely wasted on luxury and the personal gains of those in positions of power. Let’s now explore the five steps.

Democracy and the stress on multi-party elections is slowly showing that in themselves, these do not bring about considerable development changes especially in countries with poor institutions of governance. Despite embracing democracy, most developing countries have more than half of their population living in poverty. This is very sad given the hidden assumption that democracy and the current good governance rhetoric are engines of development. The development challenges of poor countries are cemented with claims nations have of national sovereignty -- that in their territory, no other country can have undue influence. The concept of sovereignty has legitimised even bad leaders that continue to rule when they clearly should not. Elections only validate bad leaders in most poor countries and give them mandate to exploit power and national resources whichever way they want without undue criticism. The majority rule (especially simple majority) thwarts all opposition in parliament and other national institutions with excessive powers vested in one person (the head of state). You might be asking yourself, “is it possible that people can vote in a bad leader into a position of power?” Yes, it is very possible because elections for most countries and peoples remain simply rituals where whoever assumes power brings no considerable positive change. People are resigned to voting as some remote duty as citizens expecting nothing much from the people elected in power. When citizens elect leaders in power, they hand over all power even rights to those leaders and the leaders even pompously call themselves “the Government” and when addressing the people (the true Government), they keep informing citizens that “their Government” is doing this and that. Whose Government is it anyway? A question our leaders (at least the bad ones) cannot adequately address even when clearly democracy “claims” that government is the people.

This realisation that current processes that bring persons to positions of power are inadequate should make us see that unless we address the problem of poor leadership in poor countries, poverty will continue in those countries. The World Bank, a few years ago, realised this fact by beginning their campaigns of good governance and building strong institutions of governance. But with bad leadership, such strong and efficient governance institutions will not be created. We should therefore seek an alternative. Some have claimed that a “benevolent dictatorship” is what can work to radically “force” good governance on national institutions, radically “force” civil servants to be accountable and deliver social goods better, radically “force” bad leaders (e.g., Members of Parliament) out of their positions and create “fear” of doing bad things using national resources. But where would we get such a benevolent leader? Who would choose such a leader? Supposing he failed to be a “benevolent” leader anyway, what can be done about it given that he or she is, in the true sense, a dictator? The idea still sounds a legitimate way of leadership if current leadership brought about by democratic elections don’t bring up good leadership in any case.

But consider the following scenario. If in a decade, citizens, can actually vote in candidates to positions of leadership with constitutional provisions that if they do not fulfil certain “agreed upon” promises, they should be thrown out of positions of power. Call this kind of system, “Contractarian Democracy.” Elections would then be two-way -- electing in leaders, but also electing out bad leaders without waiting for a full term into office to finish. Such a system would, ideally, force leaders to be “good” and deliver on “agreed upon” standards. In a sense, citizens would be empowered not to just ritually validate bad leaders in an election, but eliminate bad leadership and hopefully not only ritually.

Further, sovereignty, should be limited so that even those beyond the “Contractarian Democracy” have a voice (not just through toothless sanctions that only hurt the already poor as was the case in Zimbabwe) to help eliminate a bad leader in another country. I choose the word eliminate not to mean “kill,” but force out of power even when the leader wants to hold on to power. Over the years, those elected in power would realise that power resides in the hands of the people that vote them into power. For such a process, simple majority is inadequate because in most elections under this kind of election, the voice of the majority is not taken seriously (e.g., in an election where the winning candidate gets 28% of all votes but has the most votes compared to others -- even when this means that 62% of the electorate do not want such a candidate).

Redefining leadership structures and how leaders are elected into power is crucial in poor countries if poverty is to come to an end because the other four steps after this step presumes that there are good
leadership structures and that the top leader is a very good person. There is so much good research of what are the factors that could lead to development, so many lessons such a leader could learn of, examples of strategies to develop from other countries, and so much resources (both local and foreign) that could be used wisely by such a leader. Let us examine step 2 that seems to me to follow directly from good leadership.

Let us call this step, the “MaxMin” of resources. As has been indicated above, there is enough world resources to end world poverty as evidenced by the concentration of world resources in just 10% who own about 85% of global asserts (World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University). The Global Issues also stresses this point by pointing out that the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people is more that the Gross Domestic Product of about 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries in the world. Just how do such people amass wealth that exceeds full GDP’s of whole countries? What are the implications of such amassment of wealth? Could it be possibly acceptable (morally and not just economically) to continue providing an enabling environment for such wealth? I personally find this unethical. It seriously needs redress by World leaders who presumably are good and know they will be eliminated by citizens if they do not deliver. Should we “grab,” even violently, such resources concentrated in a few individuals and redistribute it to the poor? Keep in mind that these rich people give astounding amounts in aid and charity. What is our dilemma and how do we come out of it keeping the purpose of this article, “finding ways to end world poverty”?

Without being caught up in global politics and economics, this situation where just a few individuals hold amazing wealth when the majority are poor exists at national and local levels and can better be addressed by national governments themselves.

Unfortunately most of the national resources are at the disposal of just a few individuals and use of much of it is on very unimportant and unproductive things like large Cabinets, duplicated provincial and district structures (e.g., District Administrator and District Councils), investing in the military even for very peaceful nations like Zambia and Malawi, state dinners and parties, state visits, large entourages whenever the head of state is travelling or gallivanting around, and the so-called capacity building workshops on already known topics of HIV and AIDS, gender that capacity we never use.

National resources of most poor countries are limited (especially that they rest in the hands of a few), but so are of rich countries (even the USA), and this calls for very prudent and careful use of such limited resources. There should be maximisation in the allocation and use of such resources. This can be done having a “sector-priority based budgeting system.” Take a five-year period, for instance. Choose five priorities (e.g., road network, rural infrastructure, agriculture, schools, and hospitals and personnel). Within the priorities, highlight what would be necessary, e.g., the priority of schools could involve building a certain number of schools and guaranteeing that they are staffed. Priority-budgeting would be done in such a way that in each year of the five-year period, considerable (unfairly large and adequate) go to that sector. In five years, logically, it would be possible to considerably contribute to the five sectors. Our current budgeting system is in such a way that available resources are thin-spread to all sectors, with a tag-of-war of sectors on which sector ought to receive a certain percentage of the budget. There have been even declarations (e.g., Maputo declaration - 10% to agriculture, Abuja Declaration - 15% to health, Cairo Protocol - 20% to education )
that would propose certain percentages to, say, agriculture or health, or education. If some of the recommendations from international declarations and demands from some sectors of society are strictly followed, national budgets would be bloated beyond the logical 100% (e.g., if you have 8 sectors that require a 20% of the budget each). Take the above cited example of keeping to percentages of international declarations on allocations to specific sectors. It would mean that the three sectors (agriculture, health, and education) alone will gobble up 45% of the total budget. Whether this is the desired scenario for all developing countries can be questioned.

It is realised that in most cases, national resources are neither disbursed nor used. This must be a cause of great worry. In some cases, resources are even sent back for the national treasury after the financial year is over. In some poor countries resources are delivered very late in the financial year such that year in and year out, projects are not implemented. In Zambia, for example, in 2006 and 2007, and 2008, billions of Kwacha were returned to the National Treasury, when the country in those same years needed resources in aid and debt to supplement their national budgets. Precisely where is the problem? Ministries in-charge of finance continuously claim that other government departments lack capacity to spend the money (as though spending is what is the problem), and government departments keep blaming finance ministries for paternalism in budgeting and disbursement of funds. When all this is going on, poor
people and structures remain poor. This has led to enormous expenditure towards the end of the year on meetings, workshops, retreats, working breakfasts, dinners, launches, working holidays, payments for services not accessed, and other ways of spending that have no direct contribution to the poor. Such is wastage and highly unethical because even though, the expenditures might lead to an economically sound retirement at the end of the financial year, the intended recipients receive nothing, not even a public financial report. This kind of wastage should be minimised to zero if poverty is end in our world.

Another wastage is that of leaders themselves through allocation of “non-disclosed” amounts of money to themselves as salaries, allowances, state visits, money used in elections not distinguished from political party resources. For example, how many citizens know how much their head of state uses in a year and in what budget line is such money found in the national budgets? Where does the money for an entourage of 50 to 60 vehicles escorting the president to the airport on his or her way to a climate change meeting or UN meeting, or state visit, or Christmas holiday come from? How about the dancing cadres at airports to escort and welcome heads of state through songs and dances -- who pays them and what budget line is this drawn from? I personally have not seen in the Zambian national budget a line on “Escorts of President to and from Airport” and the amount. Should we pay so much money to Members of Parliament and Cabinet, who to me, do minimal work to bring about development. Maybe, a Teacher, a Nurse does more good work than those who doze in Parliament for 9 months arguing and issuing insults and making punitive laws for opposing views. Precisely what are the roles of MPs, Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Commissioners, and Directors? Are their job-descriptions publicly available so that we can affirm that they deserve the moneys they gobble? How about state dinners and parties? In the first place, are they necessary and who do they benefit? Maybe such state dinners should be hosted for the bottom 500, 000 poor people in a country and not the top 50, already, over-indulged persons. Wastage must be minimised at all costs. Malawi seems to be going that route with the President having cut down the size of cabinet, and minimised non-viable international visits that seem to benefit nobody. Let us go the “MaxMin” way of life and this principle is even applicable of personal lifestyles. Let us not tire here, let us consider the step 3 that obviously follow the “MaxMin” principle.

The international bodies such as the United Nations and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have over the years diplomatically tried to find strategies that can help end world poverty. They are a bit modest because they use the term “poverty reduction” and this can be seen in their goals. Whilst finding such strategies, they also have to take the interests of all their members especially the rich and powerful ones into account. A wholesale approach in the application of these strategies continues where some pilot done in a village in Nicaragua, is prescribed to a village in Nigeria. For obvious reasons, such strategies have not been helpful in all the circumstances where they have been applied because the differences in culture, leadership styles, beliefs and even difference in locations and climate.

This diplomacy and the wholesale application of approaches has rendered most of these strategies non-viable and costly in their application. Consider the amounts of moneys that were used in the whole Structural Adjustment Programmes across the globe (consultancies, application of projects, international visits, wage freezes, job losses) and how much such could have contributed to ending world poverty. How about the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and the cost of the Papers compared to the benefits? Even using the economists’ own “cost benefit analyses,” it can be argued that they did not benefit the poor as much as the cost of implementing them. How about the Millennium Development Goals, so refined in their goals?

The current rhetoric of “abiding to good governance standards,” “commitment to fight against corruption” are non-viable and highly diplomatic strategies that leaders of poor countries are only using in all they say and write because that way, they can get more donor funding and they can be in good books with rich countries and the donors.

These kinds of rhetoric statements are complemented with endless researches, planning sessions, and publications on poverty that seem to be too definite in their conclusions but whose recommendations are not adequately followed up. For most observers, we are even confused by what route to take and who to listen to. Should our governments listen to the UN or to World Bank, or a donor country such as China, or to an NGO like JCTR? What advice can one give with these endless non-viable mechanisms? This is where good leadership comes in, in determining what mechanism is relevant to that particular country, what conditionalities to accept when borrowing resources for the nation, and what to reject, in the strongest ways, even when it comes from the World Bank or the UN. Without getting emotional, let us navigate onto the fourth step and a crucial one for the poor countries.

About three quarters of people in poor countries live in rural areas with very minimal access to basic needs such as good health, safe water and some sanitation, quality education, communication systems, employment, and social security support. Some of the needs people in rural areas have no access to seem pretty much obvious, like a passable road, for people in urban areas. Rural communities in poor countries are much poorer than poor people in urban areas. The poor rural persons are more poor than the urban poor, arguably so because of lack of obviously available services like those in urban areas (e.g., roads, electricity, water).

In Zambia, for example, it is estimated that 80% of people living in rural areas are poor. In Malawi it is about 70% of all rural people poor. Precisely, what are the factors that lead to such high levels of poverty in rural areas when the economy of people in rural areas depends on the household itself and not what is available on the market (e.g., tomatoes in backyards for rural communities compared to tomatoes in a shop in urban areas). Rural communities cultivate their own food that they barter for other needs, have readily available energy sources (firewood), have water sources they need not pay for, housing without rent, work without working hours, toilets that they don’t pay for. So why should there be poverty at all in rural areas given this independence from national processes such communities apparently seem to enjoy?

This apparent independence (remoteness) is mostly what causes rural underdevelopment. As much as we will build skyscrapers in towns, five star hotels in towns, more roads (even roads on top of each other and around each other), if rural areas remain remote in development strategies, they will remain poor. Poor rural communities might just need a little push to develop compared to poor people in urban areas. What is necessary in rural areas is first and foremost establishing a good road network because this facilitates access to markets, education and health facilities, and ease of movement from one place to another. Second, the improvement of infrastructure in terms of investing in rural areas through redirection of manufacturing industries and companies to rural areas, agriculture market points (purchase of farmer inputs, sale of farm products, access to small loans), building of more health facilities (with services and personnel), schools, and extension of hydro-electric power to rural areas or other renewable energies like solar.

Another major hindrance to rural development is lack of control of resources allocated to the areas. Resources (financial and human) are highly centralised in urban areas and mostly in the capital city so much so that all the development seem only to take place in one town in the country. Despite having local government structures like District Councils in Zambia or District Assemblies in Malawi, these have no direct influence on how much is allocated to the local areas, when it is disbursed, and what areas such resources are used on. Why not empower such local structures to be smaller governance units that plan, budget and spend at that level. If a road is needed in a rural area 1,000 km from the capital city, it does not make sense to have the central structures based in the city to plan, send contractors there, and monitor the road. In any case, centralisation of resources only leads to helplessness of planning and
spending officers because the coverage of their mandate is just too vast. Take another example, the recruitment of teachers or nurses, does it not make better sense for the local councils to determine how many of these would be necessary and be involved in the recruitment process? In Zambia, for example, a new trend is coming up where recruited teachers that are deployed in rural areas do not go to those areas. Instead, they renegotiate to be in some urban or preferred area. This could be avoided if recruitment is spearheaded by the local authorities.

It is crucial that rural areas are developed and rural communities have a greater say on the resources that are made available to them by central government. Before we get exhausted and cloud this article with many sub-steps, let us look at step 5 that ties in to step 1 where “Contractarian Democracy” was proposed.

The first step proposed in this article is elimination of bad world leaders and also that the way of doing elections should be changed in such a way that citizens “sign” contracts with their leaders with clear benchmarks and that if such benchmarks are not met, citizens, in an election, vote out those
leaders and vote in new ones even before the end of their term in office. Costly and complex as such a system might look, but for development and ending world poverty, such a system is workable and practically more effective compared to the current system (although impeachment is an option for heads of state, this is limited to MPs and mostly the party of the head of state will have a majority of MPs and MPs pay allegiance to their leader) and “benevolent dictatorship.”

Since there is a contract, there should be an obligation of the contracted (leaders) to account for allocation and use of public resources, but also the decisions and policies they make and approve. Such an obligation emanates, not only from rights as some have argued, but from purely a contractual relationship between the electorate and those elected. By electing a leader, we give up certain powers and entrust it in our leaders with the view that leaders will act in our best interests. In real life, leaders would not act in our best interests despite their obligation. Citizens should therefore strengthen their obligation (some call it a right) to demand an account of how resources have been used and how decisions are arrived at. This is more crucial if such decisions are made without wide consultation of citizens as is evident in most poor countries. Most people in poor countries would not know how public resources are used and even when an effort is made to make leaders accountable, they trivially tell citizens, that that should not be their area of concern. For example, can I as a citizen in Zambia ask the President, where the resources he uses in state visits with large entourages come from? This is worsened by the secrecy surrounding leadership structures in poor countries. Almost every government document is labelled “Confidential” even when it is an announcement of a workshop.

How leaders make themselves open to account for their decisions and how willing they are to do so would amount to the criteria for either keeping them in power or voting them out. There cannot be an effective monitoring and evaluation mechanism for decisions, policies if public leaders cannot account and justify their use of public funds. Simply creating the, again rhetoric, M&E units in all government departments whilst denying citizens their contractual right to demand explanations, will continue to be ineffective.

WHEN ARE WE LIKELY TO END WORLD POVERTY?
So much said and written and sometimes badly argued, but the question remains, “are we going to end world poverty or it is simply here to stay?” This article is an effort to argue for a different and more stringent in the fight against poverty. If past and current strategies fail, we might need more radical measures. In the past articles, I have argued some of these strategies (e.g., fighting poverty at structure level for it is deep in our structures, and rejecting the current romanticisation of poverty -- all available at JCTR’s website: www.jctr.org.zm).

Strongly the question of good leadership in poor countries is crucial, not just in rhetorical terms but in practical terms where citizens are empowered to hire and fire leaders, and oblige them to act in their best interests. Without taking these steps poverty will never end.

Quarterly Bulletin

Bulletin 83 1st Quarter 2010