Affluence and poverty in the Middle East

✍ Scribed by Mahmood Messkoub

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 32 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.741

✦ Synopsis

international ®nancial institutions and MNCs have not contributed to the reduction of poverty in Africa, and may even have made matters worse by fostering a culture of dependency.

Part two of the book turns to internal factors by reviewing (somewhat incompletely) the economic history of Ethiopia. The country has a long history of war with lop-sided development priorities. Food production has been discouraged by high land taxes and peasant eviction. Ethiopia followed a socialist path of development (copied from the Soviet Union) for two decades (the 1970s and 1980s). The author argues that the villagization and resettlement programmes of the government disengaged the use of local knowledge and traditional practices. The land reform following the 1974 revolution has not resulted in an expansion of production. Rather it led to fragmentation of plots and unemployment, while the government gave priority to mechanised state farms. The forceful quota delivery at low market prices undermined producer incentives. This led to poverty and famine, and contributed to environmental degradation. Unfortunately, the author offers little more than a review of the country's history and fails to increase our understanding of the causes of poverty.

The ®nal part of the book recommends a balanced combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches, to be achieved through participatory activities, as a strategy for sustainable development and poverty reduction. The options identi®ed to attack poverty include increasing food production by improving farming techniques; improved opportunities for women; security of land ownership, provision of basic education and health facilities; improving shelter and providing employment and income generating activities during non-harvesting seasons and regional co-operation of African countries. None of these ideas are, however, new. How to achieve all these? By mobilizing governments, people and development agencies. Again, this suggestion is not novel. The author invokes greater participation in planning, implementing and evaluating day-to-day activities. Although asserting that participation and rural development are positively correlated, the author fails to provide a convincing case for how participation can be harnessed to implement poverty reduction.

The key message of the book is that despite its enormous economic potential, Africa is poor because its development efforts so far have caused it to neglect its base, namely, its indigenous knowledge and practices. The book, despite the substantial spelling and grammatical errors (and incomplete statistical evidence), is useful reading for those interested in African poverty, especially in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, it does not provide entirely coherent argument and analysis. The author argues for the necessity of adaptability and ¯exibility of traditional (local) practices to new (foreign) technology, yet suggests that integration with the rest of the world (globalization if you like) is a cause of African poverty. These two statements seem contradictory. Similarly, the claim that poor natural resources are a cause of poverty does not sit comfortably with the argument that the continent has enormous potential in terms of resources. Furthermore, poverty is not properly de®ned, urban poverty is largely ignored and the links between poverty and the government's economic policy are rarely set out clearly. A more accurate title would be The Political Economy of Development in Africa: ± the Case of Ethiopia.