Poverty reduction, economic growth and democratization in sub-Saharan Africa

During the first decade of the 21st century, sub-Saharan Africa experienced its strongest period of sustained growth in decades. Economic indicators were up, and with them, many indicators of poverty witnessed marked improvements. But to what extent has Sub-Saharan Africa’s record of economic growth made a material difference in the everyday lives of ordinary Africans? And to what extent have these region-wide trends been broadly shared across all countries? To examine these and other questions, this paper uses an experiential measure of “lived poverty” that captures a portion of the central core of the concept of poverty that is not well captured by existing measures, and thus offers an important complement to official statistics on poverty and development.

In conclusion, the study finds that lived poverty remains extensive. While most countries under examination have managed to reduce lived poverty, others have allowed it to increase. Cross-national differences in national wealth and economic growth help explain differing country trajectories in lived poverty. However, a more complete picture must also take into consideration the state of political freedom. Lived poverty is strongly related to country level measures of political freedom, and changes in poverty are related to changes in freedom.

Other key findings include:

• changes in freedom (democratisation) are strongly linked to changes in lived poverty (poverty reduction)
• five countries exhibit the linkage of political freedom and poverty reduction quite clearly - as political freedom has increased in Zambia and Ghana between 1999 and 2008, levels of poverty have come down steadily. On the other hand, as political freedom decreased in Zimbabwe, Senegal and Madagascar, lived poverty has steadily increased
• lived poverty remained essentially unchanged in Mali and Tanzania, and sharp increases are observed in three countries: Botswana, Nigeria and Zimbabwe (to 2005)
• in every country, the most commonly reported shortage was a cash income, followed by shortages of medical care, food, clean water, and cooking fuel, in that order.