Shimbo Pastory and Johnson Mwamasangula
This article was published in The Citizen Newspaper – Tanzania on 17th October 2022.
Dignity for all in practice is the umbrella theme of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty for 2022. The term ‘dignity’ is very functional here, because dignity goes beyond the abstract concept; it constitutes the basis for all fundamental rights.
Today many people living in destitute poverty experience their dignity being denied and disrespected. With the commitment to end poverty, the 2030 Agenda again gestures toward the same aspiration established under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Currently, statistics show that 1.3 billion people still live in multidimensional poverty with almost half of them being children and youth.
Persons living in poverty experience many interrelated and mutually reinforcing deprivations that prevent them from realizing their rights and perpetuate their poverty.
This includes dangerous work conditions, unsafe housing, lack of nutritious food, unequal access to justice, lack of political power or representation, and limited access to health care.
Tanzanian growth profile
In Tanzania, the day reflects multiple faces of poverty resilience, from a poverty rate decline of 11.7% in 2007 to 8% in 2018 (34% to 26%) to an increase of 1% (27%) in 2021.
In the year 2000, 86% of Tanzanians were living in impoverished conditions, but this number dropped to 28% in 2018 with record-breaking Tanzania reducing poverty at the highest percentage from 3.2% to 2.6% from 2000 through 2015.
According to the 2019 analysis by the World Bank, titled: ‘Tanzania-Mainland Poverty Assessment’ a remarkable transition of sustained economic growth which helped the country to level up from a poor or underdeveloped country to a Lower-Middle Income Country (LMIC) has been achieved by the continued efforts to improve service delivery.
But still, Tanzania needs to accelerate the pace of poverty reduction as the number of poor people remains high.
There is a considerable number of non-poor people living just above the poverty line vulnerable to the risk of slipping below it due to the rise in the cost of living fuelled by ongoing armed conflicts in Ukraine and other parts of East and Southern Africa regions, unpredictable climatic changes and aftershocks of COVID-19 outbreak.
On this day, productive social safety net programs like Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF) and Productive Social Safety Nets (PSSN) have played an important role in reducing poverty vulnerability to more than one million people in a year.
Other poverty reduction strategies seek to increase the quality of life such as access to education, clean water, sanitation, and health services. These have helped to bring a drop in counts of child and maternal mortality rates and malaria contraction.
Cash transfer programs to the vulnerable have proven to be effective in lessening extreme poverty in the country as noted by World Bank.
Efforts done by the government with multiple stakeholders in the fulfilment of goals set in the Tanzania Development Vision 2025 and SDGs through the National Strategies for Growth and Reduction of Poverty I and II (NSGRP I & II) have helped to accelerate economic growth, improving the standard of living, good governance and building public sector institutions and capabilities, leveraging digital technologies and social welfare of the people.
Policies for dignity
In reducing poverty this year’s theme ‘dignity for all in practice’ is paramount. Human capital investment is essential in ensuring respect for an individual’s dignity as it enables households at all income levels to access economic opportunities and benefit from growth which is crucial in breaking the barriers in economic development.
We also commemorate this day by supporting the hard work invested by the government in making education more accessible, bettering transportation infrastructure and placing emphasis on vocational education and education for girls.
All these have in the long run helped in reducing income poverty, increasing access to necessities and improving government infrastructure. Also, IMF reports that Tanzania has become more accountable to its people, less corrupt and has increased citizen participation in governance.
Beyond economics
Despite the significant achievement the country has reached in eradicating poverty, still, the government should know that poverty is not solely an economic issue, but also a multidimensional phenomenon that encompasses a lack of both income and basic capabilities to live in dignity.
It is the duty of the government and international stakeholders to ensure the prevention of poverty deprivation schemes that affect the realization and respect of human rights and dignity.
To prevent structurally impoverished parents from passing poverty dividends to their offspring, the government should mobilize additional effort in bridging the significantly apart living standard gaps between rural and urban areas.
More opportunities should be directed to rural areas to lessen the existing disparities in well-being. But apart from the rural-urban divide in poverty, significant regional disparities persist in living standards.
Poverty is still at the peak among the lake zone districts which are further disadvantaged in terms of vulnerability to climate-change-induced natural disasters like drought.
On the 13th Tanzania Economic Update, Transforming Agriculture-Realizing the Potential of Agriculture for Inclusive Growth and Poverty Reduction, it was noted that there is a need to further market orientation and value addition in the agriculture sector as about 79% share of the total employment comes from agricultural activities and agriculture contributes to the 75% of the national GDP.
Going forward to commemorate this day, we recommend that the governments need to invest in human capital and skills development of its current and future workforce coupled with a better enabling environment that fosters self-employment and entrepreneurship opportunities.
Small firms’ growth and survival chances further agricultural transformation and reduces vulnerability to negative domestic and international economic and weather shocks such as the Covid-19 outbreak and the armed conflict in Ukraine which challenges efforts already on the run to curb the poverty rate. This is because globally, inequalities of opportunities and income are surging thus widening the gap between the rich and the poor.
Covid-19 prospered in exposing social protection system gaps and failures as well as structural inequalities and diverse forms of discrimination that hinder efforts to combat poverty and deepen and perpetuate poverty in the non-poor population.
Covid-19 has already been the worst reversal on the path towards the goal of global poverty reduction. However, with a joint effort with global stakeholders, we will bear it, becoming resilient to future shocks and coming up with a better plan to contain poverty, especially for those living in dire and vulnerable conditions.
