No alternative: post-war poverty reduction as structural transformation in Rwanda

Abstract

This article explores the relevance of the theories of poverty and development to the impoverished post-war setting of Rwanda. This establishes how our understanding of development applies to the reality of the current poverty reduction strategies such as those undertaken in Rwanda. The main argument is that poverty reduction in Rwanda is the most pressing challenge the country faces and that to reduce poverty in Rwanda is to reduce the possibility of renewed conflict. A reliance on traditional measures for poverty reduction such as fast-paced structural transformation is unsuitable for a population where the majority are currently subsistence farmers. Further, the post development argument that reliance on western themed development is totally unsuitable for Rwanda is also inappropriate. The approach to poverty reduction should blend gradual structural change tailored to the Rwandan post-war context, which takes theoretical underpinning from the more prescriptive World Bank dominated approaches, as well as elements of theories from post-development. There are strong linkages between theories of development and post-conflict poverty reduction in Rwanda, particularly the strategies associated with structural change and neoclassical theories of development. As a cautionary note, such approaches have similar undertones to former structural adjustment, which contributed to the impoverishment of the country before the genocide, providing a fertile base for manipulation leading to conflict. However, gradual structural change, tailored to the conflict consequences is the only realistic option to remove people's sole reliance away from subsistence farming to promote peace and other livelihood opportunities.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.