The World Bank has called for a new survey to evaluate the impact of government strategies on poverty reduction in Kenya. In a report on the status of the economy, the bank said the country needs to conduct frequent assessment on whether economic gains at the national level have led to reduced poverty levels. This, the report said, will help the government develop more specific strategies. “Without more frequent surveys, there is a missed opportunity to understand whether economic gains and government policy have generated pathways out of poverty for the poor,” Mr Paul Gubbins, the World Bank’s poverty economist for Kenya, said. The report noted that poverty levels, currently estimated at between 32 per cent and 42 per cent, are still high, only declining at a rate of 1 per cent per year. The average rate of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa dropped from 56.5 per cent to 48.5 per cent between 1990 and 2010. There has been no household survey to establish the levels of poverty since 2005 when it was quoted at 47 per cent. The findings of the Kenya Economic Update report associated the high poverty levels to low levels of education and large households. It also highlighted increasing levels of the urban poor as people move to cities and other towns in search for wage jobs. “Kenya’s lagging areas are sparsely populated and more isolated from urban economic engines. The majority of Kenya’s poor live in the denser and higher potential agricultural zones in the vicinity of large urban centers,” read the report in part. The bank has pegged poverty eradication to higher economic growth rates.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:00:53 +0000
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