Economic Reforms and the Poor : Social Action Programs and Social Funds in Sub-Saharan Africa
For many African countries, and for developing countries in other regions, the latter half of the 1980s was a turning point in the struggle to alleviate poverty. In response to a marked deterioration in the living standards of the poor, caused by a...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Brief |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/1994/02/1574596/economic-reforms-poor-social-action-programs-social-funds-sub-saharan-africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/10022 |
| Summary: | For many African countries, and for
developing countries in other regions, the latter half of
the 1980s was a turning point in the struggle to alleviate
poverty. In response to a marked deterioration in the living
standards of the poor, caused by an economic crisis and the
austerity measures instituted to control it, governments
added explicit poverty alleviation objectives to their
development policies. In cooperation with external agencies,
they began to design and implement interventions such as
social action programs (SAPs) and social funds (SFs) to
protect the poor and some vulnerable groups from the harmful
effects of the economic situation and from the transitory
negative effects of economic reform. There has been a
growing acceptance of these interventions in Africa as the
World Bank has placed greater emphasis on protecting the
poor during adjustment. The present study previewed in this
brief, reviews the experience of twelve SAPs and SFs in
sub-Saharan Africa. Because a number of the programs are
still in progress at this writing, it is too soon to analyze
their effects on poverty reduction in depth. However,
performance information is increasingly available on the
implementation of these programs. This report is based on
data gathered from project documents and task managers of
the projects and on findings by the authors during field visits. |
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