• Poverty and PRSPs

Poverty and PRSPs

This paper argues that in Burkina Faso certain high-performing local institutions contribute to equitable economic development. They link reduced levels of poverty and inequality to a high degree of internal village organization. The authors find that:

• Service-asset management groups (SAMs)—one of three local institutions identified in the study—have helped to significantly reduce inequality in participating households. SAMs are a fusion of long-standing development committees and indigenous management councils that collectively manage community assets such as water. SAMs have combined the productivity goals of growth with the values of equity and solidarity.
• Current development approaches use growth as an initiator, assuming that surpluses will be used to benefit the poor. SAMs and other local institutions in Burkina Faso start with equity and solidarity and aim for a result of growth and development.
• Internal participation is essential for SAMs to function. Only locally anchored participation can power the realignments and institutional revisions needed to scale up development action.

SAMs and other local institutions have launched their communities on equitable growth paths and are reducing poverty with little or no outside assistance, despite severe resource constraints. Their impact could be enormous if external development resources augmented their potential.

Recommendation for program and policy interventions are put forward as a three-step program package and a two-step policy package. The programme package includes the following:

• Use LLI (Local Level Institutions) institutional mapping to guide new initiatives in pro-poor investment.
• Use LLI mapping to formalize and increase internalized paarticipation to quickly attain national coverage.
• Use the LLI internal framework to guarantee long-term sustainability for community driven development and rural decentralization.

The policy package focuses on two initiatives:

• Working from LLI results, link PRSP participatory monitoring strategies to LLI/SAMs for accountability and transparency.
• Working from LLI results, create national policies that favour development of indigenously based, but externally-oriented local economies.

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend