Increased internet connectivity can spur economic growth throughout Africa. But the continent has a long way to go before it can reap any broadband dividend.
Multiple approaches to alleviating poverty help cater for different contexts and groups of people.
Reuters/Pascal Rossignol
There is no one perfect package for alleviating poverty, but there is agreement on what the elements should be. Combination and sequence of interventions varies, depending on context and beneficiaries.
The gulf between the world’s poorest people and the rest of us is, if anything, widening despite global gains in lifting millions out of poverty.
Wikimedia Commons/hris1johnson
Despite progress in lifting people above poverty lines around the world, the picture is bleaker for people at the very bottom of the ladder. They have largely missed out on the gains of recent decades.
New African economic history is challenging earlier wisdom by showing, for example, that railways have had profound effects, both positive and negative on African societies.
Reuters/Thomas Mukoya
African economic history has had a renaissance and its most valuable contribution has been to show that Africans have not always been poor, nor are current poverty levels an inevitable destiny.
The MDG for eradicating poverty and hunger has been helped through new high-yielding varieties of rice (right) that can withstand drought in Africa.
Reuters/Erik de Castro
Mixed-income housing has been promoted as a panacea to concentrated poverty and crime. But recent research raises some red flags.
The growing inequality that triggered the Occupy protests, such as this one in Bennington, Vermont, is now registering as an issue with politicians at the highest level.
Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Case
The opportunity gap between well-off and poor American children is vast and, more alarmingly still, it is growing. Some political leaders are starting to take note of the grim consequences.
Modern day American poverty: Slab City, CA
Eric Thayer/Reuters
Robert Putnam’s new book aims to make the social inequality a core issue in the 2016 campaign: a member of his research team explains how.
Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten are united in condemning violence against women and children, but both overlook the young people who are victims too.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Responses to family violence by Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten and the terms of reference for Victoria’s royal commission fail to mention young people. Such a lack of recognition has dire consequences.
A return to community canteens.
Food by Shutterstock
Community kitchens that grew out of proud working class communities offer a way of feeding those struggling.
The killing of polio workers in Pakistan by the Taliban is a tragic illustration of why no development program can ignore the political problems associated with poverty.
EPA/Arshad Arbab
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s 2015 annual letter outlines their vision for global development and poverty reduction. The letter outlines four areas where they expect breakthroughs over the next…
We need to bear a few things in mind before we listen too closely to Oxfam.
Christian Guthier
Oxfam is making what might appear to be a manifestly sound moral case when it urges political leaders at the global economic conference at Davos to adopt particular policies to reduce economic inequality…
At the dawn of the 21st century, 189 UN member states adopted the Millennium Declaration as the first common framework for promoting global development, committing to eight goals (six covering health and…
There’s much more of this than there used to be.
Maisna
The conventional image of suburbia is one of bland affluence and social homogeneity. Suburbs are where the middle classes aspire to make their nests. They are the idealised safe havens for raising children…
Bianca Rodriguez, one of nation’s nearly 600,000 homeless at a Chicago underpass.
Andrew Nelles/Reuters
This year marks the 51st anniversary since Lyndon Johnson launched his War on Poverty and made poverty reduction the centerpiece of his Great Society domestic agenda. Whether we won this war, however…
Pensioners protest in Nicosia.
Katia Christodoulou/EPA
The nightmare for Cyprus started in March 2013. The country’s banking sector faced a sudden squeeze. The two biggest players – Bank of Cyprus and Marfin Laiki Bank – were in danger of a collapse which…
Pia Riggirozzi, University of Southampton and Erica Penfold, South African Institute of International Affairs
In recent years there has been growing global awareness of the interplay between rights and the development process and a generalised recognition of social determinants of health connecting poverty, equality…