Strategising poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa: The role of small-scale agriculture

International development strategies for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have been changing dramatically over the last five years - from macro-economic stabilisation, structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and sector-wide approaches (SWAps) to emphases on "monetary poverty" reduction (linked to official debt relief in qualifying low income countries) and reducing "capability poverty " in sectors such as education and health. In the development literature there has been renewed interest in the potential roles of agriculture and rural development in meeting poverty reduction targets, despite the major decline in donor funding to these sectors since the 1970s. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate by drawing attention to a number of neglected policy dimensions, with particular reference to the poorest SSA countries. First, attention is drawn to the difficulty of generalising about SSA due to the wide variation in key development variables; seven categories of country are proposed to help manage the heterogeneity problem and to reduce the tendency to "one size fits all" prescriptions of policy. Secondly, processes contributing to economic marginalisation, further increases in numbers of poor people and prospects for population growth are examined Thirdly, pro-poor development strategy choice is seen as consisting of six options. Industrialisation, mineral exploitation and tourism-led development are viewed as capable of effectively reducing poverty in only 6 relatively small number of African countries. Human capital formation, with strong donor support, is more widely feasible. But in the poorest countries, evidence is presented of declines in social service access with probable reversal in flows of net benefits - from the poor to national elites. The problem reflects inter-relationships between lack of fiscal buoyancy, the application. of "cost-sharing " to service users, and perceptions by the poor of low quality of services and relatively low returns to investment in children's education. Fourthly, in these circumstances the contribution of labour and skill intensive, small-holder export agriculture is seen as more advantageous to the poor via direct income generation, in conjunction with cost-minimising policies for effective social service delivery. The provision of sufficient production and marketing linkages between small and large private enterprises is a crucial component of structural policy, justifying a degree of legislative and regulatory intervention. Finally, the paper highlights five other neglected policy areas, including energy price instability, missing meso/regional level capacity and land reform gaps, which continue to create obstacles to poverty reduction in specific country cases.