| | Review Essay: Poverty Reduction or Adjustment by Another Name? Rita Abrahamsen Review essay on: Merging in the Circle. The Politics of Tanzania's Poverty Reduction Strategy by J Gould & J Ojanen (2003), Policy Paper 2/2003, Institute of Development Studies, University of Helsinki. pp.128. ISBN: 952-10-1235-8. Reducing Poverty. Is the World Bank's Strategy Working? by The Panos Institute, London. pp52. ISBN: 1-870670-60-4. Aid and Poverty Reduction in Zambia. Mission Unaccomplished by O Saasa with J Carlsson (2002), The Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala. pp.141. ISBN: 91-7106-489-3.
Following stringent and persistent critiques of the social effects of structural adjustment, poverty reduction emerged as a key focus of development in the late 1990s. A host of multilateral and bilateral donors, including the World Bank, the EU, the UNDP, the UK, Canada and the Nordic countries, have identified the reduction of poverty as their main development objective. This attention to poverty is accompanied by a new discourse of 'partnership', no doubt in response to past accusations of undue intervention and meddling in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. Donors now frequently argue unambiguously that development will only work if it is 'home grown', as opposed to imposed from the outside in the top-down fashion of the past. In other words, the conditionality-based aid of the 1980s and 1990s, which placed donor and recipient in a relationship of unequal exchange, has been recast as a 'partnership' of equality and mutual benefit. Whereas in the era of con-ditionalities, donors knew what was best for recipients and told them so in no uncertain terms, under the present 'post-conditionality' aid regime, recipients are said to be in charge of their own development plans and futures. As the President of the World Bank, James D. Wolfensohn, argues, 'it is clear to all of us that ownership is essential. Countries must be in the driver's seat and set the course'. |
