Towards a better understanding of the causes of poverty in Africa in the late twentieth century

Abstract

"Contemporary African poverty is now an important area of research. Some of the agreed causes of contemporary poverty, and the increased immiserisation of large sections of African society in the 1990s, include: the violence of internal conflict; natural disasters, and especially the great droughts of the last 25 years; the enormous movements of populations who have fled war and drought; and the increasing pressures of population on scarce and depleted resources. Addressing these problems is seen as the first step back from such human catastrophes. In contrast, there is no genuine consensus as to the causes of poverty arising out of what The Economist calls the 'dismal trend' downwards which, at the end of the 1980s, Apri/1996 had left the great majority of Africans poorer than they had been in 1965'" ... page 1 Show more