Abstract
This paper assesses the level of poverty in Ghana after three decades of successive implementation of numerous poverty reduction strategies including Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) by various governments of Ghana. The Keta municipality in the Volta region, where artisanal fishing thrives, was chosen as a representative sample of the whole country. The authors identified eleven artisanal fishing communities in the selected area using systematic sampling. Data were collected on household consumption patterns. This process was used to determine the profile of poverty using the latest upper poverty line of Ghana and the Greer and Thorbecke (1984) poverty formula. Research findings show that the various poverty alleviation methods implemented over three decades by the Government of Ghana, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) significantly failed as they have not produced any meaningful effect on poverty reduction in the sample area. Finally, this paper offers further suggestions regarding how this poverty gap may be bridged using alternative methods.
Highlights
The relatively poor economic performance of many Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries after implementing the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) recommended by the International Financial Institutions (IFI) has confounded many economists, (Franz, et al, 2011)
Households with no formal education in the community had the highest share of poverty at 43.5%, followed by those having primary-level education (22.6 %)
This research project sought to examine the effect of various poverty reduction strategies employed by the government of Ghana and their effect on poverty after three decades of their implementation
Summary
The relatively poor economic performance of many Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries after implementing the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) recommended by the International Financial Institutions (IFI) has confounded many economists, (Franz, et al, 2011). Notwithstanding Ghana’s poor economic performance over the years, many Ghanaians experienced relief in November 2010. At that time, their ambition to become a middle-income country, a pursuit spanning three decades which required signing onto many IMF and the World Bank poverty reduction programmes, was achieved through a gross domestic product (GDP) rebasing exercise that recalculated the official GDP per capita of Ghana as 1,363 USD (Todd Moss et al, 2012). Despite the progress made in terms of growth and development as indicated above, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), noted for its highly- rated, multidimensional method to measure poverty by using the Human Development Index (HDI), provides a different view.
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