IMPACT OF MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOAL
IN THE REDUCTION OF POVERTY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
ABSTRACT
One of the major focuses of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is agricultural development and the
eradication of poverty and hunger. A significant percentage of the population
in Africa lives in the rural areas with agriculture as their major
preoccupation, but these group of the populace are barely or not informed about
new techniques and improved technologies in agriculture.
There is no gain emphasizing the importance
of education in driving home these new techniques and improved technological
methods in agriculture; open and distance learning is a mode of learning that
can render this education accessible to the generality of the populace
regardless of time and space. ODL has proven to be effective in the acquisition
of skills and knowledge for agricultural productivity as in the case of sugar
cane farming techniques in Kenya etc and increasing the income of the farmers.
These has expose the indispensability of ODL in achieving the MDGs, vis a vis,
reducing poverty and hunger, therefore, this project attempts to shed more
light on the potentials and the role of open and distance learning in achieving
this major focus of the Millennium Development Goals.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title
page i
Certification iii
Dedication iv
Acknowledgement
v
Abstract vi
Table
of contents vii
CHAPTER ONE
1.1 Background
of the study 1
1.2 Statement of the Problem 5
1.3 Objective of the study 6
1.4 Theoretical framework 6
1.5 Methodology of the study 8
1.6 Significance of the study 8
1.7 Research hypothesis 10
1.8 Scope/ limitation of the study 11
1.9 Definition of terms 11
1.10 Organization 12
Reference: 13
CHAPTER TWO
1.2 Literature review 15
Reference 39
CHAPTER THREE
3.1 Data Presentation 42
3.2 Data analyses 44
3.3 Testing of Hypotheses 45
CHAPTER FOUR
4.1 Implication of the study 51
4.2 conclusion 51
4.3 Recommendation 54
Bibliography 59
Questionnaire 64
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The establishment of the Millennium
Development Goals has set poverty reduction as a fundamental objective by
development. In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in the
impact of development on poverty. Poverty has increasingly become a major
global issue, with halving extreme poverty by 2015 constituting the first, and
perhaps the most critical, goal of the millennium development Goals (MDGS).
Since
the 1980s, the poverty rate has been tending significantly downward in all
regions of the world except in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The ratio of poverty
for all less developed countries (LDCS) fell from 27.9% to 21.1%, but the ratio
for Africa actually increased from 44.6% to 46.4% (Ravallion and Chen, 2004)
Against this background it is not surprising that several recent papers argue
that most African countries will not achieve the target of reducing poverty by
half by 2015 (Fosu, 2008, UNDP 2003, Hammer and Naschold, 2000). In the last
two year decades in Nigeria, there has been little or no project made in
alleviating poverty despite the massive effort made and investment into many
programmes established for that purpose. For instance, Canagarajah et al,
(1997) reported increased level of poverty over the period spanning the 1980s
and 1990s in Nigeria and inequality was established with an increased in the
Gini coefficient from 38.1 percent in 1985 to 44.9 percent in 1992. Results of
the 1996/97 National consumer survey showed that 56 percent of Nigerians live
below the poverty line. In 1985 about 43 percent were below the figure at 34.1
percent at 1985 prices.
In 1992, 46.4 million Nigerians were said to be living in
absolute poverty, out of which 80.2% or 37.7 million are in the rural areas
(Ogwumike, 1996). The marginalization of the rural areas through urban-biased
development policies is largely responsible for the high poverty incidence in
the rural areas (Obi, 2007). These statistics indicate a worsening poverty
situation in the country and a cause for concern (Okunmadewa, 1999).
The most
frequently advocated manner to achieve such poverty reduction is through
economic growth (Arsenio and Fuwa, 2003). Growth has therefore traditionally
been considered the main engine for poverty reduction. As reported by the world
bank (world Development indicator, 2002), real per-capital income in the
developing world grew at an average rate of 2.3 percent per annum during the
four decades between 1960 and 2000. This is a high growth rate by almost only
standard. In order to achieve reduction in poverty, however, income growth has
to be equitably distributed (Kalwij and Verschoor, 2007, World Bank 2006).
Thus, the current thinking on how best to achieve poverty reduction, both
economic growth and equity have to assume a central place in development
strategies. Further, equity is seen not only as of intrinsic importance but
also of instrumental importance but also of instrumental importance through its
impact on the rate at which economic growth leads into poverty and income
redistribution among the mass majority especially the rural dwellers.
What is
more, evidences in the literature points to the increasing level of income
inequality in developing countries including Nigeria, over the last two decades
(e.g. Addison and Cornia, 2001; Kanbur and Instig, 1999) thus, to attain the
objective of reducing poverty in Nigeria the pre-occupation of the government
has been the growth of the economy as a pre-requisite for improved welfare. To
this effect the government therefore indicated several economic reform measures
which include economic stabilization measures of 1982, economic emergency
measures in 1985 and structural adjustment programme (SAP) in 1986 components
of SAP include market determined exchange and interest rates, liberalized
financial sector, trade liberalization, commercialization and privatization of
a number of enterprises (Aigbokhan, 2008) specialized agencies were also
established to promote the objective of poverty reduction. These include
Agricultural Development Programmes, Nigeria Agricultural, Cooperative and
rural Development Bank, National Agricultural Insurance scheme, National
Directorate of employment, National primary Health care Agency, people’s Basic
education transit, mass education through universal basic education (UBE),
Rural Electrification Schemes (RES) among others. The recent effort is based on
the seven point agenda. Like earlier reform packages, the strategy considers
economic growth as crucial to poverty reduction. The major issues of the seven
point agenda include, power and energy food, security, wealth creation and
transportations, others are land reforms, security and mass education.
Additionally, attention to the
importance of income distribution in poverty reduction seems to be growing.
Whether growth reduces poverty, and whether in particular growth can be deemed
to be “pro-poor”, depends however, on the impact of growth on inequality feeds
into poverty (Araar and Duclos, 2007). This paper is thus set to analyze the
growth and inequalities of poverty, that is, by how much does poverty decline
in percentage terms with a given percentage rise in economic growth and
inequality in Nigeria. Technically, the growth elasticity of poverty is the
rate of reduction in poverty resulting from a 1% increase in average income if,
for example the growth elasticity of poverty is 2, then we would expect an
increase in poverty average income of 2% per year to yield a reduction of 4%
per year in poverty. Previous research has shown that the value of the growth
elasticity is lower in countries with higher inequality, as measured by the
Gini coefficient (Ravllion, 2001, Hanmer and Naschold, 2000).
This means that policies which reduce inequality will
increase the amount of poverty reduction associated with economic growth. This
is not to say such policies will necessarily lead to more poverty reduction, as
they may also lower the rate of economic growth. This is the well-known trade
between growth policies and redistribution (Anderson, 2005).
1.2
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The problems associated with poverty
in Nigeria are multifaceted. Nigeria has no reason to be a poor country because
of the vast economic potentials and human resources that it is endowed with,
but why is Nigeria then lagging behind a country like liby a that relies only
on oil for survival?
Self-sufficiency and self-reliance
in food production has always been a daunting task for the policy makers in
Nigeria, especially, after the ephemeral oil boom of the mid-1970s. Infact,
this challenging situation is not confined to Nigeria. Akindele and Adebo
(2005:55) note that food production is a major challenge that the new states
have to contend with. A retrospective look at the Nigeria’s economic pattern
shows that before the civil war the country relied on its agricultural base for
its export earnings that represented “66 percent of the country’s foreign exchange,
while it rose to 73.4 percent in 1968” when activities in the oil sector were
paralyzed due to the country’s civil war (1967-1970).
(Richard, 1978). The importation of food further wrecked
serious harocs on agriculture when full exploitation of oil resumed in earnest
and consequently, “the government could think of no other alternative than to
mortgage the country’s economic future to the good behaviour and concordance of
the multi-nationals and the local capitalists” (Richard, 1978: 224) arguing along
the same line, it is acknowledged that:
During
the 1970s, Nigeria evolved from a poor agricultural economy into a relatively
rich, oil dominated one. In 1969 the oil sector accounted for less than 3
percent of GDP and a modest US $370 million in exports (43 percent of total
export), per capita income was only US $130, and more than half of GDP was
generated in the agricultural sector. By 1980, the oil sector had come to
account for nearly 30 percent of GDP, oil exports totaled us $25billio (96
percent of total exports) and per capita income exceed US %1.100. Following the
discovering and exploration of oil, the economy experienced many symptoms of
the “Dutch disease” (NCEMA cited in www.gdnet.org.).
1.3
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
It is therefore the purpose of this
research to elucidate on poverty reduction, its features and operations of
millennium development goal. The research work in tended to show how MDG can
help in reduction of poverty in Nigeria. It also looked into theoretical
framework of MDG’S on reduction of poverty in Nigeria.
i. To find out if MDG’S can help in
poverty reduction.
ii. To determine the role of MDG’S in supply of food to the
rural area.
iii. To
know the extent of MDG’S in economic growth of Nigeria
1.4
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
One way to answer our research
question is to compare countries with and without PRSPS in term of MDG
progress. But, as the Appendix shows, nearly all low-income countries
participate in (or have completed) the PRSP process since 1999. This precludes
a statistically meaningful comparison with the few that do not. An alternative
“treatment” approach is to compare countries before and after they enter the
PRS process. About 60 countries are involved in the PRS process since 1999, a
year later, in September 2000, the MDG’S were acknowledged by the UN member
states. For these countries we performed an exhaustive search for data on the
48 indicators for the 18 targets connected to the eight MDG’S. Unfortunately
limitations on useful data turn out to be such that we can research only three
MDG’S these goals are (to achieve universal primary education), (to promote
gender equality and empower women) and goal 4 to (reduce child mortality).
After receiving many data collection options, for reasons of constituency and
data availability we settled for this study on the world development indicators
and the UN millennium development Goal indicator database for our MDG
indicators and controls, we use data on school enrolment and completion rates,
literacy, gender parity, health, income and urbanization. They are collected
from by UNESCO, UNICEF and WHO sources.
In figure 3 below we compare the
change in per-country average values of nine MDG indicators for 59 countries,
before and after the country enter the PRS process. We look at the change in
indicator values as a percentage of the pre-PRSP level for instance, for
Albania which started the PRSP process on May 3, 2000 with submission of an
I-PRSP, we compare MDG indicator values averaged over 1990-1999 to the
2000-2005 average (later data are were not available at the time of writing).
The findings are encouraging on average, all indicators improved after
countries entering the process, and all differences are statistically
significant (P<O.OI) except for the indicator “share of women in
non-agricultural wage employment”. This finding holds regardless of whether we
compare country-level averages (as in the figure) or pool all observations. Nor
are findings particularly sensitive to time period. If we start observation in
1995 instead of 1990, some findings disappear due to data scarcity but no
results are overturned.
1.5
METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY
Having extensively reviewed existing
and related literature in the last chapter, the research in this chapter seek
to explain how he under takes the fact finding mission. Bearing in mind that
the quality of a research work is influenced greatly of its methodology
(Agbonifoh and Yomere 1999) the approach to this research work is quantitative,
descriptive, and analytical.
1.6
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Agriculture is important to the
world nay Africa and Africans. About 70% of the populace in Africa is involved
in agriculture. It is the main stay of the economy of several African countries
(and other countries of the world) contributing a high percentage of the GDP
(Adewale, 2007). An estimated 1.2 million people are absolutely poor, living on
less than US $1 per-day nearly twice that number live on less than US $2
per-day. Currently, about 800million people go hungry each day. Approximately
75% of the absolute poor in developing countries live in rural areas where they
depend on agriculture for their livelihood therefore, reducing poverty in rural
areas, and hunger in both rural and urban areas will depend heavily on the
sustainable developments of agriculture through efforts in the agricultural
sector, income of the rural poor must increase rapidly, and food production in
the developing world must more than double over the next twenty years to keep
up with population growth.
Agriculture policy papers has
highlighted the critical role of agricultural productivity in stimulating
agricultural growth and poverty reduction. Agriculture is strongly linked with
the eradication of poverty and hunger which is the foremost goal of the MDG’S,
having by 2015 the proportion of those suffering from extreme poverty and
hunger. However, other MDGS have direct or indirect linkages with agriculture a
more dynamic agricultural sector will change the assessment of economic returns
to educating children compared to the returns from keeping children out of
school to work in household agricultural enterprise. Also, in promoting gender
equality and empowering women Agriculture empowers women for farmers directly
and indirectly through reduction of child mortality, agriculture directly
contributes by increasing diversity of food production and making more
resources available to manage childhood illnesses. Agriculture directly helps
improve material health through more diversified food production and higher
quality diets and indirectly through increased incomes. It also help combat
HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases through higher quality diets, and
indirectly, by providing additional income that can be channeled to health
services. Agricultural practices can be both direct cause of and importance
solution to environmental degradation. More productive agricultural
technologies allow the withdrawal of agriculture from sensitive environment
developing a global partnership for development will help maintain the steady
increase in agricultural trade, and significant increases in development
assistance offered to the agricultural sector.
However, agriculture especially
African agriculture is faced by several problems making the continent the most
backward in agricultural production. The farmers are largely in the rural areas
with small and fragmented plots having little or no contact with extension
services and crucial information needed for production, processing and
marketing farmers have no large knowledge of market prices and little access to
input and output markets. Consequently yield are low, and income from
agriculture leaves little for the farmer to turnover.
1.7
RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS
1. Ho:
There is no significance relationship between MDG’S and poverty reduction in
Nigeria
Hi:
There is a significance relationship between MDG’S and poverty reduction in
Nigeria.
2. Ho: There is no significance relationship between MDG’S and
Government intervention on poverty reduction in rural areas.
Hi: There
is a significance relationship between MDG’S and Government intervention on
poverty reduction in rural areas.
1.8
SCOPE/THE LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
This study is within the Nigeria
economy and millennium Development Goal and Poverty in Nigeria. Its benefit and
constraints with particular reference to Nigeria.
This research cannot be regarded as
being perfect and complete in all as some difficulties were enciphered in the
course of study.
Financial resources of data
collection and final production of this research also passed as a limiting
factor to the research. Unavoidability of some vital material, refrained for
the research as there material were considered to be highly confidential in
some sourced place.
However, strenuous effects have been
made to minimize the effect of the effective work.
1.9
DEFINITION OF TERMS
i. MDGS-Millennium Development Goals
ii. PRSP-Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
iii. Development paradigms-Negative development of the economy.
iv. ODL- Open and distance learning
1.10
ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
In this research project, it is made
up of four chapters; chapter one contains, the general introduction, chapter
two is the review of literature analysis. Chapter three is the presentation of
the research methodology, and chapter four is summary.
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