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3. USEFUL AND UP TO DATE POVERTY POINTERS
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A note to readers: This section is designed to literally point readers (whether working
in civil society, government agencies, research centres or in international donor agencies)
to a variety of new initiatives may affect their work environment. These postings all have
a firm poverty focus. Some have a clear Southern African focus while others are more
continental in nature; yet others have an international focus. But they all impact on our
understanding of regional poverty issues.
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.1 THE OECD(DAC) POVERTY GUIDELINES
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The OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) recently drew up an extensive set of
poverty reduction guidelines to guide the work of its member states towards broad poverty
issues.
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The guidelines cover five major themes:
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Poverty concepts and approaches
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Partnership issues
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Country programming
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Policy coherence and
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Institutional change in development agencies.
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The document notes that development co-operation agencies now need to work in a much closer,
more co-ordinated way with a wider range of development partners. They should accordingly
tailor assistance to partner country priorities and needs where the conditions for
partnership exist. Donors, the report continues, are now accountable to partners and to
their own publics for action and commitment: in short, they need to work as facilitators,
rather than prime movers, of development.
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Note: The relevance of this OECD(DAC) document has arguably been increased by the
commitment of New African Initiative to form a common African position on overseas
development assistance and to engage with the OECD(DAC). The proposed output of this
engagement would be a charter to underpin a development partnership: a core component
would be a "complementary, independent assessment mechanism for monitoring donor
performance" and of monitoring recipient country performance.
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Linking up: The OECD has given SARPN permission to distribute the lengthy document on
request, in electronic format. Readers should request copies from sarpn@hsrc.ac.za.
Enquiries to OEC(DAC) itself can be directed to Dag Ehrenpreis at dag.ehrenpreis@oecd.org.
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3.2 A POVERTY REDUCTION LEARNING NETWORK
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The Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex is anchoring an
ambitious project to improve policy analysis and management for poverty reduction in
sub-Saharan Africa. An IDS team, which included African scholars, have produced an
extensive proposal based on visits to a number of African countries. Their report was
subsequently discussed at a meeting in Uganda earlier this year.
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The report notes that significant poverty reduction cannot be achieved without strong policy
analysis and management capacity in both the public sector and civil society. The report
provides a comprehensive needs assessment of policy analysis and management for poverty
reduction and current levels of expertise in seven countries in East and Central Africa.
The report proposes the creation of a well resourced Poverty Reduction Learning Network
that systematically addresses both the generic as well as more specialist sector learning
needs of poverty practitioners in all countries in East, Central and Southern Africa.
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Linking up: The IDS website may be consulted for the full report and associated
documentation at http://www.ids.ac.uk/prln Alternatively contact Damien Thuriaux at IDS
at damient@ids.ac.uk.
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3.3 PREPARING FOR THE DOHA WTO MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE
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With the Doha WTO Ministerial Conference a few months away, the ECA and the OAU recently
held a four-day meeting in Addis Ababa to discuss multi-lateral trading issues in
preparation for the Doha summit. The meeting was intended to provide the elements for an
African position on key issues around international trade and investment. The report
issued after the conference can be consulted for full details of discussions and decisions.
SARPN would like to highlight three issues from the conference recommendations.
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First, the meeting "emphasised the challenge of mainstreaming trade, capacity building
within government, private sector and civil society to articulate national trading interest
and to fulfil regional, international and multilateral trade obligations". Second, that at
a regional level, it was observed that the secretariats of both the UNECA and the OAO
required strong trade units to provide technical support for member states. Regional
economic communities should also enhance their capacity to engage in trade issues at
regional, international and multilateral levels. Third, the meeting noted that at a
multilateral level, the "centrepiece of Africa's future strategy must be to maintain
its unity in international and multilateral trade negotiations."
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Linking up: The full documen tation of the conference is available on the ECA website
at www.uneca.org
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3.4 BUILDING SOUTHERN SOCIO-ECONOMIC RESEARCH CAPACITY
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The School of Development Studies at the University of Natal (Durban) recently hosted a two
day workshop to discuss how research institutions in the South could access funding for
research from international donors. The meeting brought together 30 persons representing
university researchers from various institutions in the South and international donor
organisations.
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Three commissioned papers were presented and debated. They were:
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Donor funding of socio-economic research in Southern countries, by Tony Killick;
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Social science research agenda in India and the role of donor agencies, by BK Joshi; and
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Evaluation of donor support for socio-economic analytical capacity strengthening in the
French-speaking countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, by Dieudonne Ouedrago
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These were complemented by summary presentations on models of funding by various donor
organisations. Subsequent to the conference, Darran Newman and Arjan de Haan of DFID have
produced a conference summary which provides a brief overview of the points of debate.
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Linking up: The papers and conference summary can be accessed from the following www
address: http://www.nu.ac.za/csds
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