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Poverty in Africa has been rising for the last quarter-century, while it has been falling in the rest of the developing world. Africa's distinctive problem is that its economies have not been growing. This article attempts to synthesize a range of recent research to account for this failure of the growth process. I argue that the reasons lie not in African peculiarities but rather in geographic features that globally cause problems but that are disproportionately pronounced in Africa. These features interact to create three distinct challenges that are likely to require international interventions beyond the conventional reliance on aid.

ABSTRACTPolicy reforms often pit the poor against the poor by triggering a fall in poverty for some but an increase in poverty for others. Aggregated national measures gloss over these fine patterns and pronounce 'a reduction in poverty'– is such aggregation across poor individuals ethically permissible? Addressing this type of aggregation is a hard issue. This paper has made an attempt in that direction by outlining an axiomatically grounded aggregate measure of such gains or losses, duly giving more importance to the losses to a poor compared to the gains of another poor.

European countries vary in the extent to which they succeed in reducing poverty using social transfers. However, we do not have good ways of understanding how these different outcomes are achieved. It is therefore very difficult to learn lessons from abroad. This paper uses micro data from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Condition (SILC), and attempts to decompose reductions in child poverty rates and gaps into the contribution made by children, old age, social exclusion, housing and work-related benefits. The analysis is undertaken for all families with children under 16, lone parent families, couple families, and then for families with varying levels of work intensity. Transfers make a substantial contribution to reducing child poverty rates and closing poverty gaps. The contribution varies between countries in the European Union. There is no single model, no most successful exemplar. Some countries do better for their children in lone parent households and others do better for their children in couple households. The analysis has enabled some opening up of the how question, though what is going on is still something of a mystery in some countries. It is probable that analysis at the national level with greater knowledge of national benefits systems is necessary to further open the 'black box'.

Poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) present a recipient country's program of intent for the utilization of World Bank loans and grants to alleviate debt under the bank's programs of action for poverty reduction in highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs). This article argues that structural transformation is a prerequisite for poverty reduction in Zambia. However, the Zambian PRSP is largely informed by mainstream thinking on poverty and livelihoods. It champions a neoliberal program constructed on the sanctity of the market and seeks to maintain the very structural processes that engender poverty. Because it fails to break, conceptually and methodologically, from past program failures, the PRSP is likely to be just the latest installment in the ever-changing fashionable semantics of the "development community." The article examines the conceptual and methodological failures of the Zambian PRSP particularly with respect to the measurement of poverty and the concept of participation.

Analyses the political landscape in which poverty reduction takes place. Much of the discussion on poverty is located within a model of harmony, as if everybody were in favour of pro-poor policies. Takes as its starting point the statement from the UN Social Summit that 'At the Summit there was a global commitment to eradicate poverty' and discusses some of its political implications. (Original abstract - amended)

This paper examined the gender question in poverty reduction in Nigeria. Based on desk study, it reviewed selected poverty intervention programs in the country and concluded that poverty reduction programmes and policies have barely touched on women. The paper made a number of recommendations to mainstream women in poverty reduction agenda