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Progress Against Poverty:  Promoting Sustainable Livelihoods East and Southern Africa
(UNDP Africa Bureau)
East and Southern Africa Subregional Follow-up Conference to the World Social Summit
15-17 March, 1999 Nairobi, Kenya

1. Livelihood crisis in Africa have been, a to a large degree still are, marked by abject poverty, graft and grand corruption, bad governance and loss of social capital. An annual growth of 8-9% for GDP or 5-6% for GDP per capita is needed to make significant inroads against poverty. But virtually no African country, with the rare exceptions of Botswana and Cape Verde has achieved such a rate in the past 15-20 years. Botswana and Cape Verde are rare exceptions. From 1970 to 1995, nearly 80% of Africans saw their per capita income decline. The good news is things are changing. In the past few years, economic growth has been accelerating in sub-Saharan Africa. The prospects for poverty reduction are more promising now than they have been since the early 1970s. If public policies were more pro-poor, the prospect that millions of Africans could move out of poverty in the next few years would be notably enhanced. In 1996, GDP in Africa grew by about 5%. In 1995, annual growth was 3.4%, and in 1994 just less than 1%. Since population growth is still about 3% a year, a 5% GDP growth rate translates into growth in per capita income of about 2% a year. While still modest, such a rate could help initiate reductions in income poverty.

2. Poverty results from the fundamental economic and political structure of a society. It is against this background that UNDP articulates the "Sustainable Livelihoods Approach" as an integrated package of policy, technology and investment strategies to promote sustainable livelihoods by building on local adaptive strategies. These include: the provision of an integrated framework in which aspects of several earlier approaches come together synergistically, assessment of community assets, adaptive strategies and livelihood activities as the entry point, strong emphasis on the questions of sustainability in economic, environmental and social terms. In addition governance and policy questions and their inter-linkages are addressed in a cross-sectoral and holistic manner. Local government capacity is usually of particular importance, it uses an empowerment approach, and it seeks to improve productivity of existing livelihood systems and create new opportunities through appropriate investment and technology inputs.

3. Four essential steps characterise the process. Step I identifies the assets, entitlements, activities and knowledge bases which people currently use to make their living. Step II: A cross-sectoral, macro-micro linked policy analysis is carried out. Step III: This is an assessment of the key technologies contributing to the livelihood systems. Step IV: This step identifies existing local finance facilities and traditional practices and identify opportunities for putting such facilities to the service of local people. These four steps underpin the fact that the extent and nature of activities that contribute directly to livelihood security are conditioned by the breadth of the range of available participating stakeholders and the degree of uncertainty and complexity that characterised their agency and ideology, and the functional relations between them". These define and emphasise the interface between governance, as a social and human capital, on the one hand, and accumulation and environmental resources, as natural and manmade capital. An actionable agenda and an operational framework for sustainable livelihood programming is hence proposed supported by case studies to corroborate the arguments.

I. Poverty, states and leaderships

4. The end of the Cold War marked the dismantling of state power oligarchies and the titans who presided on humankind's most appalling era of distress and despair. As we entered the decade of the Nineties, ordinary Africans witnessed a unique era emerging in human history testifying to the systematic disintegration of totalitarianism and with them the miraculous reprieve of humanity that tend to relegate earlier ‘great’ events in history to the backstage. Advances in human thought and action towards global justice and universalisation of guarantees for human rights were gathering added momentum with the motive energy contributed by these unprecedented events.

5. While the downing of this new era of political pluralism and economic growth is a welcome event, the stewardship, management and administration of the twin processes of political and economic reform are also marked by uniquely austere organizational-strategic issues. Even under democratically favourable contemporary global conditions, historical, ideological and strategic characteristics internal and external to the Sub-Saharan Africa economic, social and political transition process still would exist that make it a costly exercise. Characteristics and problems of this sort can be identified and understood through critical, yet constructive, analysis focused on certain key elements of the reform strategy; in setting the stage for the evolution of new political and economic culture based on people’s knowledge.

6. Three decades after independence, developing countries are still to trying to emerge from the vicious cycle of human deprivation and underdevelopment. In spite of the fact that States are committed to sustain human development and an outpouring sympathy from the international community, cushioned by massive resources, nations enter the next millennia with a crippling material deprivation that permanently haunts a majority of the population. A major obstacle to efforts to install and consolidate poverty-reduced democratic systems in Africa is the all-powerful, highly centralised and hierarchical bureaucratic structure. The state has proved to be the main channel for personal wealth accumulation and securing privileged position in society. The economic rewards of the public sector are so much that politics has become a much more brutal struggle.

7. As the winner takes all and the looser is consigned to the political and economic wilderness, all the brutality and corruption of bitter fights ensure in every political competition. It is simply a zero-sum game where the loser has no refugee or alternative. Consequently, the bureaucracy will no doubt fight aggressively in order to obtain its patrons in positions if political power by any means possible. The bureaucratic set-up is characterised by a complicated net works of patron client relations, with a patron giving a decent position in the government in exchange for a client’s political support. Thus more and more people regard politics the easy way out for satisfactory income generation they are willing to do anything including sabotaging a true democratic process by being the mouthpiece of an authoritarian regime. The main issue here in state institutions-citizens relations is whether or not state institutions has the capacity and the will to relate to citizens and citizens groups on the basis of mutual respect, autonomy, equality and trust.

8. Many believe that poverty has become as vague as development itself and has become another slogan to infuse world’s emerging industry - foreign aid. "Development" projects attempt to secure, little more than basic welfare functions, rather than targeting human development. This is not to say that such programmes are unnecessary. The point is it is dishonest and misleading to continue to refer to such outcomes as "development". A more accurate description would be that governments may have pioneered the spread of transitory remunerated welfare safety-nets in marginal areas; which rather than promoting societal convergence, appear more to underpin the objective conditions for the absence of such a possibility.

9. In the past, the way we have conducted the business of development has eroded the confidence of people and made them more government and aid-dependent. The bloated public service bureaucratic machinery and aid management, which encouraged encroachment of civil space in the name of development, thrived for the benefit of the powerful elite. It rendered the poor powerless, voiceless, and effectively disenfranchising people from participating in the decision-making processes. These have seriously handicapped socio-economic and cultural development and synergistically acted to create the poverty and vulnerability that ridiculously haunt the continent. Indeed this culture of business-as-usual ‘development’ should be given priority attention since it is essentially a multi-dimensional, all pervasive affliction leaving no sector of economic, political and social activity untouched; having deadly consequences on human development, democracy, and the defence, promotion and protection of human rights.

10. As we entered the decade of the Nineties, ordinary Africans witnessed a unique era emerging in human history testifying to the systematic disintegration of totalitarianism and with them the miraculous reprieve of humanity that tend to relegate earlier `great 'events in history to the backstage. Advances in human thought and action towards global justice and universalisation of guarantees for human rights were gathering added momentum with the motive energy contributed by these unprecedented events. The ability of States to strip people of their rights to livelihood security, shrouded behind the thin veneer of 'non interference in each other's internal affairs' was increasingly being challenged.

11. While the dawning of this new era of political pluralism and economic growth is a welcome event, the stewardship, management and administration of social, political and economic reforms is also marked by uniquely forbidding organizational-strategic issues. Even under democratically favourable contemporary global conditions, historical, ideological and strategic characteristics internal and external to the Sub-Saharan Africa economic, social and political transition process still would exist that make it a costly exercise. Characteristics and problems of this sort can be identified and understood through critical, yet constructive, analysis focused on certain key elements of the reform strategy; in setting the stage for the evolution of new social, political and economic culture based on peoples priority, knowledge and practice.

12. This has to change. In the wake for Africa's renaissance, we have to approach development by connecting with people, joining in on their aspirations, complementing their abilities with our resources and assisting to create true partnerships. We must commit ourselves to a common discipline of empowerment among all people, to a fundamentally new value system based on justice, peace and the integrity of creation. It will be a system that recognises the rich resources of human communities, their cultural and spiritual contributions and the wealth of nature. It will be radically different from the value system on which the present economic and political orders are based and which lies behind the current crises. We need to define a new understanding of empowerment in which those who have been marginalised by reason of sex, age, economic and political condition, ethnic origin and disability, the homeless, refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants alike take their place at the centre of all decisions and actions as equal partners.

13. In essence, my vision for UNDP Africa is to become a centre of excellence in promoting self-directed and self-reliant development in Africa. This arises from a deep conviction that UNDP can assist Africa to use its own resources to build its future through the adoption of new approaches. Our collective mission, yours and mine, is directing UNDP resources to realize Africa's vision for collective self-reliance, peace and development. Within UNDP Africa, a new paradigm is emerging on how development co-operation could be done in a qualitatively different way. Taking the SHD framework as the base, UNDP Africa has identified its mission as one of directing UNDP resources to realise Africa’s vision for collective self-reliance, peace and development. In strategic and practical terms this means providing development assistance using an asset-based empowerment approach so that technical assistance and resources provided by UNDP Africa bring additionally rather than dependency to the people who receive them. Instead of replacing people’s initiatives with exogenous models which often undermine their agency in finding solutions to the development challenges that confront them, technical assistance is delivered in such a way as to build on the assets and strengths of the people including their knowledge and aspirations. The premise is that the prevailing uneven development equation can be transformed to one based on a true accountable relationship, from stewardship to partnership.

14. Given time, the empowerment approach entailed in this new paradigm, can take root to become significantly enabling to African countries and peoples as they strive to meet their objectives through UNDP’s programme resources and its network system of Country Offices, regional programmes and development partners. This requires among, other things, a fundamental paradigm shift in the identification of development challenges and a sustained effort to transform the way in which knowledge is currently constructed, organised and used as a basis for programming.

15. Recently the UNDP Executive Committee Note articulates the "Sustainable Livelihoods Approach" (SLA) as an integrated package of policy, technology and investment strategies together with appropriate decision-making tools which are used together to promote sustainable livelihoods by building on local adaptive strategies. While the approach has been developed independently, it nonetheless resonates with the spirit and practices of these earlier approaches. It also seeks to overcome their limitations while adding independent value. Its added value arises from several features.

1. The provision of an integrated framework in which aspects of several earlier approaches come together synergistically, with strong emphasis on the questions of sustainability in economic, environmental and social terms;
2. Assessment of community assets, adaptive strategies and livelihood activities as the entry point. This is a holistic entry point, which sets the stage for well-integrated outputs and is different from sectoral entry points such as water, health, agriculture etc. It also sets the stage to build on the positive and so help to overcome the donor-recipient syndrome.
3. Governance and policy questions and their inter-linkages are addressed in a cross-sectoral and holistic manner by focusing impacts analysis on the totality of the livelihood system and its sustainability rather than on sectors and examines the inter-locking nature of macro-micro linkages, sectoral policies and social policies with governance arrangements. Governance arrangements refer to relationships, roles and capacities of both government and civil society actors. Local government capacity is usually of particular importance;
4. It uses an empowerment approach, seeking to improve productivity of people's own livelihood systems and create new opportunities in a sustainable manner through appropriate investment and technology inputs. It also provides a framework for the development of measures and indicators to monitor improvement in livelihood systems and their sustainability.

16. It addresses the objectives of the WSSD, viz. poverty alleviation through civil society capacity building and endogenously designed and self-reliant modes of development, productive employment through private sector growth including employment-based private and public sector interventions, and social integration through democratisation, good governance, decentralisation and self-determination to establish space for the participation of the civil society in citizenship and build up a sense of local organization, family and social cohesion.

17. Through sustainability that is premised on decision-making which reflects a balance among economic efficiency, ecological integrity and human well being (including equity considerations). Livelihoods are the assets, activities and entitlements by which people makes a living. Sustainable livelihoods are derived from people's capacity to access options and resources and use them to make a living in such a way as not to foreclose options for others to make a living, either now or in the future. This broad definition takes on specific and operational meaning mainly at the household or community levels in the biophysical and socio-economic contexts in which they are located. The Methodology for using the "approach" to help promote sustainable livelihoods outcomes can be described in four simple steps, which are not necessarily implemented sequentially. Some or all of the steps can be implemented in parallel or phased to varying extent depending on resource availability and local circumstances.

18. Step I identifies the assets, entitlements, activities and knowledge bases which people currently use to make their living. Step II: A cross-sectoral, macro-micro linked policy analysis is carried out. Step III: This is an assessment of the key technologies contributing to the livelihood systems. Step IV: This step identifies existing local finance facilities and traditional practices and identify opportunities for putting such facilities to the service of local people. The major work after these steps is to ensure close interaction and feedback in and among all the above steps. Cross sectoral and transdisciplinary requirements become clear and will usually demand that practitioners in policy, technology, investment and in the sectors work together and at different levels. Execution of the steps outlined above results in a holistic package of recommendations for use by decision-makers in policy, technology and investment to promote sustainable livelihoods. These decision-makers are likely to be at the international, the national and the local levels.

19. As provided in the introduction, the unique contribution of the sustainable livelihoods approach is the synergy that is created by the outputs of the main "building blocks" of the sustainable livelihoods approach - human resilience, economic efficiency, social equitability and ecological stability. Adaptive strategies and capacities generate and maintain means of living and enhance well being and that of future generations. They represent permanent change in community strategy, and structure, organizational processes. These capacities are contingent upon availability, stability and accessibility of options, which are ecological, socio-

cultural, economic and political. They are predicated on equity, ownership of resources and participatory and wise decision-making -- notions of SHD and SL that incorporate the idea of change and uncertainty. Fig 1 relates the interface between the various elements that contribute directly to the synergy that enhances livelihoods sustainability. The can be clustered under the following categories. Capital formation and accumulations encompassing human capital, natural capital, physical/material capital, and social capital, which in turn refers to its element - socio-political, psychosocial, organizational, and cultural and spiritual capital. The tools for planning: Multi-track communications for participatory assessment and planning policy, institution and strategic analysis and programme review. The SL benchmarks: Resilience, ability to recover from stresses/shocks, economic efficiency, social equitability, ecological sustainability. Processual and strategic elements that determine the preconditions and preparedness participatory and wise decision making, production and availability of livelihood resources, access and control of livelihood resources, and stability and sustainability.

20. A major objective of the Sustainable Livelihood Programme in Malawi is therefore to build the capacity of individuals at the household level.

21. This will enable them to plan and undertake activities which efficiently and effectively utilise household resources in a manner which increases the sustainability of their livelihood systems and ensure that all household members have stable access to adequate livelihood security that required to maintain a healthy and active life. In order to achieve this, the programme aims to develop the capacity of individuals, organizations and institutions at the community level : to organise households in a manner which empowers them: a) to analyse the constraints and opportunities they face in their day-to-day life; b) to propose and plan activities (relevant to local conditions) which address the problems identified (using methods, techniques and technologies appropriate to local conditions); c) to be major partners in priority actions; and d) to play a key role in the monitoring and evaluation of all activities, so that appropriate refinements can be made to ensure they remain appropriate to local circumstances and their sustainability.

22. At the district level the SL approach helps a) to facilitate community participation in the development process; b) to provide or ensure access to decentralised, local level services and goods from both public agencies (research, extension, health, education...) and the private sector (finance, markets...). c) facilitate the flow of information and resources from the national level down and from the community level up. d) ensure strong linkages between national policies and strategies and community level plans and action. At the national level it helps a) create and maintain an enabling policy environment conducive to the development of sustainable livelihood systems; b) enact necessary economic, political and legislative reform; c) provide public services and goods, including information, which would not be economically, financially or logistically viable for the private sector to provide; and d) ensure co-ordination of activities and collaboration between the public sector, the private sector and Malawi’s partners in development.

NB. PAPSL -participatory planning and assessment for sustainable livelihoods, MTC - multi-track communication, PSIR - policy, strategy and institutional review, PR - programme review, CB - capacity needs assessment

23. The 1998 UNDP Africa Poverty Report identifies several important policy directions that are generally applicable emerge from a brief review of the development experience of African countries:

• Do not rely solely on targeted interventions or social expenditures to reduce poverty;
• Concentrate macroeconomic policy on achieving pro-poor growth;
• Muster resources for a broad-based rural development strategy;
• Insist on the state continuing to play a leading role in creating the enabling environment for growth and human development;
• Focus on mobilising domestic resources for investment through capital market reform, using public investment as a stimulus;
• Directly address marked inequalities in access to productive assets and economic opportunities;
• Confront the HIV/AIDS epidemic openly, early and forcefully; and
• Decentralise governmental decision-making to enhance participatory development.

24. As illustration of the above points, the following section provides "macro" profiles of 8 countries: Angola, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Namibia, South Africa and Uganda. In each case, the focus is on the country's development strategy and the effectiveness of this strategy in reducing poverty. Our main source of information is UNDP-supported National Human Development Reports. As in other regions, these reports are proliferating in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of the intellectual dynamism of the human development approach is now located at the country level. In Africa many of these reports have directly addressed poverty and linked its reduction to a country's basic development strategy, macroeconomic policies and political system.

25. Uganda had a promising future. It was blessed with a good climate, fertile soil and a relatively developed transportation system. It was self-sufficient in food, and its agricultural sector was a large earner of foreign exchange. Its manufacturing sector earned income from the export of copper and textiles, and supplied the domestic economy with many basic inputs and consumer goods. The promise of progress was shattered, however, by the ensuing years of dictatorship, human rights abuse, economic mismanagement and civil strife. During the 1970s, Uganda's GDP fell by about 25% and exports by 60%. An increasing share of national income was diverted to defence, and spending on health and education plummeted.

26. The economy has been on a recovery path and, particularly important for poverty reduction, agricultural output has revived. Agriculture has the potential to feed the country and serve as the engine of growth. Since almost all-rural households have access to land, land reform policies could ensure an equitable distribution of the benefits of growth. However, the Uganda Human Development Report reports that growth which has averaged 6% a year since 1986 has not yet been effectively translated into poverty reduction. The gap in expenditures between rural and urban areas has widened, and inequality has increased significantly, with the Gin coefficient (a common measure of inequality) jumping from 0.377 in 1989 to 0.409 in 1992. Non-agricultural sectors have grown the most, and urban residents have been the biggest beneficiaries.

27. In 1990, the government of Uganda launched a full-scale poverty programme called the Programme for the Alleviation of Poverty and the Social Cost of Adjustment. Uganda's programme followed the pattern set by the Social Dimensions of Adjustment Programme, supported by the World Bank, the African Development Bank and UNDP, and by Ghana's previous Programme of Action to Mitigate the Social Costs of Adjustment. As noted in Uganda's 1997 Human Development Report the Programme for the Alleviation of Poverty and the Social Cost of Adjustment treated poverty essentially as a social and residual issue not as a structural problem. The programme mainly sought to provide services to local communities and politically visible vulnerable groups war widows, orphans, retrenched civil servants, Kampala slum dwellers and children from AIDS-affected families. Activities consisted mainly of rehabilitating primary schools, providing low-cost sanitation and health services and building small-scale infrastructure.

28. By the mid-1990s, despite significant economic growth, most Ugandans remained poor. Concerns about the paradox of extensive poverty coexisting with sustained economic growth encouraged the government subsequently set up a national task force to formulate a Poverty Eradication Action Plan that could mount a more comprehensive and co-ordinated attack on poverty. Civil organizations have played an active role in elaborating the plan. The plan's basic approach is to simultaneously ensure that economic growth is sustained and that its benefits are more equitably distributed. The premise is that the best way to reduce poverty is to enable people to earn remunerative incomes from productive employment, including self-employment and to allow them to participate in basic decision-making about their lives. The plan has four main components: infrastructure development, human resource development, good governance and rural development

29. The fifth-largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, Angola is blessed with abundant natural resources: huge oil reserves, rich diamond deposits, large potential for hydroelectric power, vast marine and river resources, and fertile and extensive agricultural land. Having achieved independence in 1975 after 15 years of armed struggle against colonialism; the country was primed to use such resources for rapid development. The 1997 Angola Human Development Report states that, according to 1996 estimates, two-thirds of urban households live in poverty. The report's calculation of the Human Poverty Index-with some replacement of the indicators used by the global Human Development Report-shows that 59% of the population lacks basic capabilities.

30. With the cessation of hostilities, Angola is poised for recovery. Short-term economic growth is expected to be driven by natural resource exploitation. While the rest of economy has stagnated in the 1990s, oil production has grown by 9% a year, and now accounts for about half of GDP. The country's huge debt burden, estimated at $12 billion in 1996, has been reduced by one-third, freeing up resources to promote human development. Angola has been achieving trade surpluses for some time, but its current account has been in deficit because of burdensome payments on its external debt. Demilitarisation also holds great potential for resource mobilisation: more than 45% of the national budget was diverted to the war effort.

31. It is estimated that a full 38% of current national income would be needed to raise the poor out of poverty. Hence the only viable option is to regenerate rapid growth but growth that is decidedly pro-poor. This implies stimulating the production of oil and diamonds, but harnessing the income they generate to revitalise other, more employment-intensive, directly poverty-reducing sectors, principally agriculture. The maintenance of peace through good governance, respect for human rights and promotion of social inclusion is pivotal for the success of all other initiatives. To foster greater decision-making at the provincial and community levels, government operations need to be decentralised. This move would also bring decisions about poverty reduction closer to the problem. Recognising the importance of promoting good governance, UNDP is actively assisting the government in implementing its Programme for Institutional Reform and Administrative Modernisation. Granting more financial and administrative autonomy to provinces and municipalities is consistent with promoting a broad-based rural development strategy that can decisively contribute to enhanced social inclusion and greater poverty reduction.

32. As pointed out by the 1996 Madagascar Human Development Report, which refers to the findings of a participatory poverty assessment, the Malagasy people define poverty partly in terms of lack of social integration. Rural people define the poor not only as those who lack land and cattle, and do not have enough food or clothing, but also those who are relegated to the fringes of the local community and unable to maintain local traditions, customs and norms. Isolation and lack of security haunt the lives of the poor, particularly in remote rural areas.

33. During 1991-95, Madagascar was in a political transition to a pluralistic democracy, and the needed pro-poor restructuring of the economy began to slow. GDP fell 7 percentage points in 1991 and grew an average of only 1.1-% a year in 1992-94. Inflation, external debt and fiscal deficits were on the rise again. An increase in private investment just barely compensated for the decrease in public investment. Neither the public nor the formal private sector could provide jobs: in 1993, for example, 80% of new jobs were created by the informal sector.

34. Measures that provide economic alternatives for the rural poor are the highest priority for an antipoverty programme. The government should take the lead in efforts to improve agricultural productivity through extension services, credit and rural infrastructure. Because the degrading of the environment represents a "ticking clock" counting down on the viable options for sustainable human development programme that can arrest further burning of forest resources by offering alternatives to traditional cultivation is crucial. The government has started to reform its development strategy along these lines. It has launched labour-intensive infrastructure works in the most disadvantaged areas, and is beginning to restructure expenditures to give priority to basic human development. In addition, it is adopting a decentralisation programme to ensure that the restructuring of expenditures reaches disadvantaged communities. The biggest challenge to poverty reduction is not so much devising these broad-based initiatives as mustering the political consensus to implement them.

35. To do this, the government must win back the trust and support of the people, who have become alienated by decades of economic decline, abuses of power, increasing environmental degradation and deepening poverty. The country has developed a framework that covers three programme areas: poverty reduction, policy reforms, and environment. The poverty reduction programme has followed a sustainable livelihoods approach. NGOs will implement these programmes in two provinces in the Southern part of the country, which are considered to be poorest. Provinces and districts are encouraged to make action or development plans to be used as check when approving community action plans

36. In 1991, a transition government was established and, with sizeable international financing, embarked on an ambitious Emergency Recovery and Reconstruction Programme. Of crucial importance, poverty reduction is the central goal of the country's national development strategy. The government is following its own path to development and appears intent on systematically reducing human deprivation. A case study commissioned by UNDP maintains that as economic recovery has begun, income poverty has noticeably declined. Nearly 70% of households registered an increase in real consumption levels between 1989 and 1994. Infant mortality has declined. And 27% of the population now has access to safe water modest level indeed, but a marked improvement over the 4% with access in 1980.

37. What is the government's development strategy? The 1997 Ethiopia Human Development Report stresses that one of the strategy's main features is institutional namely, a concerted policy to decentralise authority to regional administrations. For example, regional governments are responsible for development planning, project management and providing basic social services. This approach has been fully endorsed by the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, established in 1995, and is meant to make a decisive break with the problems created by remote and dictatorial central governments, and to promote rural-based, people-focused development. In addition, it is hoped that by making poverty reduction efforts community-based and participatory, they will be more responsive to local realities and therefore more effective.

38. In January 1998, the Government, together with UNDP and UNICEF, published a public expenditure review of basic social services. This review is an important step in clarifying the nature of government expenditure and providing an early assessment of progress in reducing poverty through budget reforms. The report had four objectives: determining how much of the national budget is being spent on basic social services, estimating the level of this expenditure on the poor, establishing the scope for inter-sectoral and intra-sectoral budget restructuring in favour of basic social services and the poor, and identifying areas where the cost-efficiency of delivering basic social services could be improved.

39. Total government spending and the social sectors' share of it has been rising since 1980. In 1995, the social sectors accounted for 39% of the budget and 15% of GDP. But only 12% of the budget were spent on basic education and health services. The review found a critical need to improve the administrative and planning capabilities of the health sector. Although there has been a shift to basic health services since 1994, there is room for greater reallocation. Expenditure remains biased toward non-basic health service, with acute-care hospitals receiving 76% of recurrent expenditure. Non-hospital primary care, by contrast, accounts for only 1% of current expenses. The country has developed a Poverty Alleviation and sustainable Development Programme. In its implementation, the programme involves several other ministries. So far baseline reports documenting wealth across the country have been drawn. The bottom line is that South Africa would like to draw a comprehensive national programme and then invite UNDP to fit into that programme. In so doing the country hopes to promote its ownership of the programme.

40. Despite the country's high expenditures on health care, both in relative and absolute terms, its health indicators are no better than sub-Saharan averages and in some cases are worse. Since independence, the Government has adopted the primary health care approach with some success. Still, Namibia, like South Africa, faces a number of challenges, such as trying to re-deploy staff to rural areas in order to provide more services to the poor. The report pointed out that government has grown significantly since independence, with expanding revenues allowing increased public spending and employment. This has permitted high per capita expenditures on basic social services. In fact, Namibia's public expenditures per capita are $640 more than the per capita income of many sub-Saharan countries. Despite high per capita spending, the efficiency and impact of these investments are low relative to other sub-Saharan countries with smaller per capita budgets. Moreover, government spending is dominated by personnel costs, which have risen dramatically since independence. One in eight members of the labour force now works in the public sector.

41. The 1997 Namibia Human Development Report states that Namibia's Gini coefficient is 0.67, one of the highest in the world. The World Bank reports that the richest 5% of the population receive more than 70% of GDP, while the poorest 55% receive only 3%. As the 1996 Namibia Human Development Report emphasises, economic growth is necessary to raise the incomes of the poor, but redistribution policies are also important. Since independence, the growth of Namibia's GDP sparked by such sectors as tourism and fishing has exceeded the rapid growth of its population. Yet it has not been sufficient to provide employment to the majority of the indigenous Africans population or make any dent in widespread poverty. Changing the pattern of growth to be more pro-poor is a top priority. But, as is the case elsewhere in Africa, this would require a comprehensive rural development strategy.

42. At the outset, we have underlined that poverty results from the fundamental economic and political structure of a society. It is against this background that UNDP articulates the "Sustainable Livelihoods Approach" as an integrated package of policy, technology and investment strategies to promote sustainable livelihoods by building on local adaptive strategies. Micro-policy formulation and management will have to take into account of the following and need to be tackled at three levels - agency, operative ideology and process and strategy

43. Agency refers to the full range of significant participants and their activities and relations to SL policy formulation and management. Participants include potential as well as actual domestic as well as international actors. Micro-policies such as sustainable agriculture that require a reorientation to traditional/indigenous means of farming demand that some old habits generated by "extension oriented agriculture" to die. Some stakeholders in State and Government will find this a difficult choice to make. The following are the undercurrents that determine the scope and nature of agency specific needs, imperatives and causes for interaction in a "participatory development" exercise that is dominated by certain stakeholders.

44. The basic point here is that the extent and nature of livelihood sustainabilities are conditioned by the breadth of the range of available participants and the degree of uncertainty and complexity that characterised their agency and functional relations. In reality a rich associational life characterises many traditional societies. But the richness of such forms of associational life does not imply the presence of a strong civil society as concealed here. The kind of associations prevalent in the context of authoritarian or hegemonic regimes tends to reflect the weak character of the state. Informal associations are characterised by fragmentation and disengagement from the state institutions. While associations exist, they have not developed more formal structures and not openly presented themselves in the public area. The weakness of the state meant that few incentives existed to form autonomous organizations to engage with the state rather the ‘exit’ option prevailed as individuals preferred to remain outside the reach of state institutions.

45. At the structural level, a certain hierarchy of agency and activity is evident within the network of participants, such that some actors assume primary position relative to others that are by comparison relegated to be limited players. This then characterises the ‘enabling environment’ for Sustainable Human Development that is modulated and, at times, mediated by a number of distinctive and shared additional elements. This include concepts and rules of government, national and cultural values, traditions of political discourse and arguments, and modes of representation of specific individual interests, needs and issues. These elements, or complexes of elements, will tend to assume varying forms and enter into shifting relations of competition, co-operation and hegemony during the exercise of participation. Generally, the broader the range of ideological elements at play and the more varied and uncertain their relations, the greater the possibilities of process openness and transparency that exist. But a lot of questions linger that need to addressed in the SL Policy:

1. Does "poverty reduction" enter local processes as an external ideology, constructing and deploying its concepts in sterile abstraction from the immediacies of indigenous traditions, beliefs and values?
2. In the case of rural communities, do ideas addressing poverty come into play in total opposition to, or in co-operation with historic values and sentiments?
3. In the struggle over the establishment sustainable livelihoods, do leading stakeholders equate the articulation of their ideas and agenda with the production of broad-based concepts, norms and goals that should govern the direction of national development at all levels?
4. Do participatory processes signify change in terms of the transformation of the immediate stuff of stakeholder-specific partisan agenda into a new kind of co-evolutionary activity - an activity mediated and guided by objective and critical policy analysis, formulation and management standards, rules and principles?

46. In the light of these questions, it is possible to draw a conceptual distinction between two levels of articulation of ideology in policy analysis, formulation and management process and to note the implications of their relations for process openness. There are first, representations of specific interests, identities, needs, wishes, goals, claims, and demands in policy formulation and management, different in different individuals, groups and communities. These are to be distinguished from a second level of production and circulation of collective ideology where broad-based concepts, principles and rules take shape and come into play in the analysis, formulation and management of policies for sustainable livelihoods.

47. Thus, it entails conceptualisation in global categories that are invested with varying local meanings that are themselves in part actualisation of trends in international political (and development) thought. The openness, transparency and complexity of poverty reduction will depend on the extent to which and how global and local levels or dimensions are articulated with each other. This means that the attempt to subsume poverty by some particular political agenda or ideological intention must, therefore, limit rather than enhance openness of transition process. If what explicit general forms signify is no particular transition strategy but the very process of democratisation itself, then any particular agenda or intention must, to the extent it is democratic, allow general forms to work themselves out through it. Conversely, good governance and sustainable livelihood security strategy or strategies must take on generic elements, dimensions and functions of good governance and sustainable livelihood security process.

48. Poverty reduction in itself, in order to have significant constitutive or regulative effects on the plenitude of particular representations, must be allowed to attain coherence and integrity even as it comes into play in varied contexts of activity. While it may be tied to the initiatives and leadership of assignable organizations or groups in its emergence and development, it nonetheless gains currency as a relatively autonomous system that other, competing; organizations can also participate in and operate. As a set of distinctly general categories and mechanisms of good governance and sustainable livelihood security thought, discourse and practice, transition process takes the diversity of particular political ideas and activities into itself and makes them a vital part of its conceptual and institutional economy. It medicates and channels specific actors and their activities by means of an objectification and generalisation that works on and through them. In answering the above questions we need then to look closely at the added values the sustainable livelihoods construct offers. It adds value to

• traditional "poverty" projects and programmes as it bases its assumptions on historically rooted community knowledge and experience
• participatory paradigms by the very fact that communities build norms in participation based on their cultural adaptive strategies. The spiritual dimensions of community unity and strength, for instance, has enabled people to organise themselves and realise their potential and power as individuals and communities, working towards the kind of self-reliance and self-determination, which are an essential conditions of interdependence. Kinship, unity of purpose and oneness among community members facilitate the task of effective, organizational action which is in turn expedited by organizational structures and leadership based on unity. Community organization members cherish shared perceptions and common cultural values on how they perceive themselves in relation to their environment.
• participatory paradigms by bringing the whole arena of civic education. The evidence for this assertion is the virtual absence of civic education training as a key component of many participatory development programmes and projects. It is fundamental to the sustainable livelihood construct that civic education - learning about and appreciating one’s rights, duties, obligations and responsibilities as a citizen and the immediate rules, laws and governance structures within which one exercises citizenship is the first and fundamental step in development participation.

49. In this light, process openness can be understood as a dynamic two-way operation of generic forms on particular contents and particular contents on generic forms in which the deployment of the conceptual and institutional machinery of good governance and sustainable livelihood security is at the same time the representation of specific needs, interests, motivations, claims, rights and obligations by individuals and groups. Going beyond structuring or rearranging African political actors and institutional activities in their spontaneous, often turbid reality, this operation should result in their transformation into forms of transparent agency and practice within a democratic political system.