Reduction In sub-Saharan Africa Research Articles

Foreign direct investment and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa: does environmental degradation matter?

This paper investigates the threshold effect of environmental degradation on the FDI-poverty nexus in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1986–2018. The study used panel threshold regression for the empirical analysis. The evidence from threshold regression using different measures of poverty and environmental degradation shows that the poverty reduction effect of FDI is not eroded by environmental degradation. The study found overwhelming evidence that at the higher level of environmental degradation, FDI contributes significantly to poverty reduction except when Household final consumption is used to proxy poverty and FDI produces an insignificant effect on poverty reduction at the higher level of methane emissions and nitrous oxide emission. Based on this finding, any attempts to reduce environmental degradation by reducing the inflow of FDI will worsen poverty rates in the region.

The Role of Public Goods Provision in Reducing Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa: Quantile Regression and Fixed Effect Models

The poverty situation in sub-Saharan Africa continues to be a major concern to the world due to the increasing rate of population. The study investigates the impact of institutional investments on poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa using panel data from 2000-2018. The study employed fixed effect and quantile regression models to investigate the relationship between institutional investment and poverty reduction. The results revealed that investment in education contributes significantly to the fight against poverty in the sub- region as compared to health investment. Also, investment in the energy sector also contributes significantly to the fight against poverty in the sub-re- gion, however, the security investment has no significant effect on poverty reduction. The results from the quintile regression confirm the earlier results. In conclusion, the study discovered that investing in infrastructure, health, energy, technology, sanitation, and water supply, and education sectors in the sub-region has a consequential effect on poverty reduction in the sub-region.

The effect of financial inclusion on poverty reduction in Sub-Sahara Africa: Does threshold matter?

This paper investigated the threshold effect of financial inclusion on poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using an annual dataset spanning 2010 to 2017, the Hansen’s estimation and Diff...

The Contribution of Absolute Income Towards Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Rwanda

The study portrays current worldwide empirical facts on the progress of economic growth and poverty relief in developing countries of the world. It’s well known that in most developing countries, the lives of citizens are not always very pleasant. There are usually lots of inconveniences in the ways of life for the citizen of these countries. Whenever the government of such a country responds to the inconveniences of life by formulating developmental programs to alleviate the problems of the people, such programs in most cases, do not work, making such government to be frustrated and discouraged. However, the government of Rwanda plays an important role in a number of areas including agriculture, education, and the health sector in order to reduce the mortality rate to its citizens and promote entrepreneurship. The aim of this study is to evaluate the level of absolute poverty and the appropriate methods that Rwanda has applied to curb down poverty levels, at the same time, picking key lessons and guidelines that can be of assistance in curbing down poverty in parts of sub-Saharan countries, Rwanda inclusive. In order to achieve its aim, the paper was put into four sections. Section one explains the poverty profile of Rwanda before and immediately after the genocide while the second part describes the short strategies that Rwanda took to reduce poverty. Section three elaborates the work the country puts to ensure it achieves its goals of achieving long-term goals of becoming a middle-income country by 2020. The fourth section describes the environment that the state has created to ensure that its strategies work as planned. The research work also relies on other related secondary documents from the mentioned institutions.

Sustainable Agricultural Intensification in Four Tanzanian Villages—A View from the Ground and the Sky

Agricultural intensification based on smallholders is among many economists viewed as a necessary developmental path to ensure food security and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa. Increasingly, a one-sided focus on raising productivity in cereals has been questioned on environmental grounds, with the concept of sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) emerging from the natural sciences as a way of advancing environmental and social needs simultaneously. SAI approaches have, however, been criticized for being both conceptually and methodologically vague. This study combines socioeconomic survey data with remotely sensed land productivity data and qualitative data from four villages in Tanzania. By triangulating and comparing data collected through ground level surveys and ground-truthing with remote sensing data, we find that this combination of methods is capable of resolving some of the theoretical and methodological vagueness found in SAI approaches. The results show the problems of relying on only one type of data when studying sustainable agricultural intensification and indicate the poor environmental outcomes of cereal monocropping, even when social outcomes may be forthcoming. We identify land use practices that can be considered both socially and environmentally sustainable. Theoretically, we contribute to a further problematization of the SAI concept.

A scoping review of interventions for crop postharvest loss reduction in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia

Reducing postharvest losses (PHLs) of food crops is a critical component of sustainably increasing agricultural productivity. Many PHL reduction interventions have been tested, but synthesized information to support evidence-based investments and policy is scarce. In this study, PHL reduction interventions for 22 crops across 57 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia from the 1970s to 2019 were systematically reviewed. Screening of the 12,907 studies identified resulted in a collection of 334 studies, which were used to synthesize the evidence and construct an online open-access database, searchable by crop, country, postharvest activity and intervention type. Storage technology interventions mainly targeting farmers dominated (83% of the studies). Maize was the most studied crop (25%). India had the most studies (32%), while 25 countries had no studies. This analysis indicates an urgent need for a systematic assessment of interventions across the entire value chain over multiple seasons and sites, targeting stakeholders beyond farmers. The lack of studies on training, finance, infrastructure, policy and market interventions highlights the need for interventions beyond technologies or handling practice changes. Additionally, more studies are needed connecting the impact of PHL reductions to social, economic and environmental outcomes related to Sustainable Development Goals. This analysis provides decision makers with data for informed policy formulation and prioritization of investments in PHL reduction.

After the lockdown: macroeconomic adjustment to the COVID-19 pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic is ripping around most of the world, but not in Africa; at least, not yet. At the same time, the policy response is remarkably uniform: most of sub-Saharan Africa went into lockdown from the second week in March. What happens next for the pandemic across Africa is uncertain, but the March lockdowns are unlikely to have contained the epidemic by themselves.What is clear is that the combination of domestic lockdowns and the spill-over from the global recession means immediate and severe hardship. This paper looks beyond the public health aspects of the pandemic to examine the medium-term macroeconomic adjustment challenge confronting domestic policy-makers and international donors. We combine epidemiological and macroeconomic models to calibrate the scale of the combined shock to a representative low-income African economy and to show how alternative policy options for slowing transmission of COVID-19 impact on public revenue, and on GDP in the short run, and hence shape the path to recovery. Noting that the first lockdown, however costly, does not by itself eliminate the likelihood of a re-emergence of the epidemic, we then frame the agenda for key macroeconomic and public finance policies to sustain recovery, growth, and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa.The initial hit to consumption will be up to one-third. All the public policy options are grim. International donor finance of US$40–50 billion, together with domestic reform to accelerate recovery, would make a significant difference to the outlook for poverty.

Harnessing foreign aid for the poor: role of institutional democracy

PurposeThis paper examines the relationship between foreign aid, institutional democracy and poverty. The paper explores the direct effect of foreign aid on poverty and quantifies the facilitating role of democracy in harnessing foreign aid for poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).Design/methodology/approachThe paper attempts to address the endogenous relationship between foreign aid and poverty by employing the two-stage least squares instrumental variable (2SLS-IV) estimator by using GDP per capita of the top five Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries sending foreign aid to SSA countries scaled by the inverse of the land area of the SSA countries to stimulate an exogenous variation in foreign aid and its components. The initial level of democracy is interacted with the senders’ GDP per capita to also instrument for the interaction terms of democracy, foreign aid and its components.FindingsThe results suggest that foreign aid reduces poverty and different components of foreign aid have different effects on poverty. In particular, multilateral source and grant type seem to be more significant in reducing poverty than bilateral source and loan type. The study further reveals that democratic attributes of free expression, institutional constraints on the executive, guarantee of civil liberties to citizens and political participation reinforce the poverty-reducing effects of aggregate foreign aid and its components after controlling for mean household income, GDP per capita and inequality.Research limitations/implicationsThe methodological concern related to modeling the effects of foreign aid on poverty is endogeneity bias. To estimate the relationship between foreign aid, democracy and poverty in SSA, this paper relies on a 2SLS-IV estimator with GDP per capita of the top five aid-sending OECD countries scaled by the inverse of land area of the SSA countries as an external instrument for foreign aid. The use of the five top OECD's Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) countries is due to the availability of foreign aid data for these countries. However, non-OECD-DAC countries such as China and South Africa may be important source of foreign aid to some SSA countries.Practical implicationsThe findings further suggest that the marginal effect of foreign aid in reducing poverty is increasing with the level of institutional democracy. In other words, foreign aid contributes more to poverty reduction in countries with democratic dispensation. This investigation has vital implications for future foreign aid policy, because it alerts policymakers that the effectiveness of foreign aid can be strengthened by considering the type and source of aid. Foreign aid and quality political institution may serve as an important mix toward the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and the Africa Union Agenda 2063.Social implicationsAs the global economy faces economic and social challenges, SSA may not be able to depend heavily on foreign partners to finance the region's budget. There is the need for African governments to also come out with innovative ways to mobilize own resources to develop and confront some of the economic challenges to achieve the required reduction in poverty. This is a vision that every country in Africa must work toward. Africa must think of new ways of generating wealth internally for development so as to complement foreign aid flows and also build strong foundation for welfare improvement, self-reliance and sustainable development.Originality/valueThis existing literature does not consider how democracy enhances the foreign aid and poverty relationship. The existing literature does not explore how democracy enhances grants, loans, multilateral and bilateral aid effectiveness in reducing poverty. This paper provides the first-hand evidence of how institutional democracy enhances the poverty-reducing effects of foreign aid and its components. The paper uses exogenous variation in foreign aid to quantify the direct effect of foreign aid and its components on poverty.

The impact of microcredit on agricultural technology adoption and productivity: Evidence from randomized control trial in Tanzania

Abstract Adoption of technology is indispensable for increased agricultural productivity and poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. Lack of access to credit is often identified as a constraint on the adoption of agricultural technology. Recently, microcredit has generated considerable enthusiasm and hope for ensuring sustainable financial inclusion of the poor. We conducted randomized control trial (RCT) to examine the impact of microcredit on the adoption of technology and productivity of rice cultivation in Tanzania. Collaboratively with BRAC, a globally-known microfinance institution, we offered microcredit specifically designed for agriculture to randomly selected farmers. We estimate the intention-to-treat effect (ITT) as well as the local average treatment effect (LATE) of microcredit, by using the treatment status as an instrumental variable (IV). Overall, we find no evidence that the BRAC program increases the use of chemical fertilizer. Also, credit use does not result in an increase in paddy yield, profit from rice cultivation, or household income. Our results from sub-sample analyses suggest that credit does not increase the fertilizer use by those who have better access to irrigation water as they have already applied the amount of fertilizer near to the recommended level. On the other hand, credit increases the fertilizer use by those who have limited access to irrigation water and have previously used little fertilizer. However, possibly due to the poor yield response to fertilizer, the increase in chemical fertilizer use does not result in higher yield for them. We also observed similar phenomenon for the comparison between trained and non-trained borrowers before the intervention. Our study suggests that improving credit access may not be enough to increase small-scale farmers’ technology adoption, agricultural productivity, and welfare.

Parental educational homogamy and under-five mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: Clarifying the association's intricacy

Worldwide, under-five mortality (U5M) rate is highest in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). There exists a gap in knowledge on the pathway through which Parental Educational Homogamy (PEH) influences U5M in SSA. In this study, we tested the research hypothesis’ PEH is not associated with under-five children's survival probability in SSA.Demographic and health survey datasets for 21 SSA countries were analyzed. Cross-sectional design and multi-stage cluster sampling technique were used for sample selection in each of the countries under investigation. The dependent variable was the survival status of a newborn to age 59 months while the main independent variable was PEH generated from information on wife's and husband's level of education. Data were analyzed using Chi-square test, Cox-proportional hazard model and Brass-adjusted model (α=0.05).Under-five mortality rate ranges from 56/1,000 live born in South Africa to 190/1,000 live born in Sierra-Leone. Across countries, U5M rate was higher among the children of parents with at most primary education than that of parents who had at least secondary education. This pattern of U5M rate was also observed for children of parents where husbands were more educated than their wives. Maternal age at birth, sex of the child, toilet facility, type of cooking fuel, tetanus injection during pregnancy, and birth weight were significantly associated with U5M in 14, 11, 8, 7, 11, 14 and 20 countries respectively. A significant relationship was established between PEH and U5M in 11 of the 21 studied countries but was identified as a predictor of U5M in Congo Democratic Republic, Gambia and Zimbabwe.Parental educational homogamy exhibits a pattern of relationship with U5M in SSA. Ensuring that individuals particularly women have at least secondary education before childbearing will facilitate an U5M reduction in SSA.

IT IS NOT ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY; WELFARE IT IS ABOUT RIGHTS

We assume that the undernourishment or starvation continued in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) because there the misery persisted. Poverty reduction is the only way to the end hunger in Africa. Also, for an agricultural country in SSA the best way to solve the problem of poverty is through agricultural development. Our analysis is based upon a sample of nine countries in SSA, so called SSA – 9. SSA has around 47,5 percent of rural population in extreme poverty while between 1990 and 2005 when food prices were stable and low, extreme rural poverty in SSA involved around 64.6 percent of population. Thus, we have built up a model trying to answer to the question of how the agricultural gears in SSA – 9 were moving between 1990 and 2005 and assess how the agricultural growth could reduce rural poverty. We used a system of recursive rather than simultaneous equations: a recursive model is a special case of an equation system where the endogenous variables are determined one at a time in sequence. The most important result is that the main tools that had a strong relation with poverty reduction in SSA – 9 were legislation on property rights (PR), access to the credit system, Human capital and infrastructure.

Household livelihood diversification and gender: Panel evidence from rural Kenya

There are high hopes that livelihood diversification could contribute to goals of poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study uses household panel data collected in 2008 and 2013, combined with a mixed methodology to examine the regional and gender disparities, as well as the determinants of change in livelihood diversification in the agricultural regions of Nyeri and Kakamega in rural Kenya. The study period was characterised by important structural changes in the composition and sources of household cash incomes, with farm incomes declining significantly, pushing female headed households into absolute poverty. Whereas the contribution of nonfarm income to total household cash incomes increased significantly, especially in Kakamega. The econometric results show that there is a positive and significant relationship between changes in household asset wealth and changes in livelihood diversification at the regional level, implying that diversification is mainly an accumulation strategy for wealthier farm households. In addition, changes in livelihood diversification are significantly correlated with the initial level of diversification, household demographic characteristics such as age, gender, education level, and hiring labour. Furthermore, increased access to agricultural input credit and more secure land rights seem to promote specialisation in farming rather than diversification. Whereas poverty has a negative and significant effect on change in livelihood diversification. The results have implications for development policy in rural Kenya – highlighting the need to harness the positive aspects of livelihood diversification for poverty reduction, while reducing the negative effects on poorer households by reducing asset entry barriers into remunerative activities.

The Effect of Personal Remittance on Poverty Reduction in Sub Saharan Africa

The objective of this study was to analyze the macroeconomic effects of personal remittance in 29 countries located in the Western and Eastern African regions on current accounts balance, economic growth and poverty alleviation using a panel data of 2000-2014. Both for the economic growth and poverty reduction effects estimation, random effects model was found to be appropriate by applying the Hausman model specification test and Breusch-Pagan Lagrangian Multiplier (LM) test. But for separate estimation of West and East regions, random effects for the Eastern and fixed effects for the Western become the appropriate estimation models. Based on the estimation result, remittance has a statistically significant and positive effect on economic growth in the countries together. When remittance increases by 10%, the economy grows by 1.47%. Plus, a 10% rise in per capital remittance causes, a 1.14% growth in per capita GDP. And it has a negative significant effect on poverty headcount. When remittance receipt increases by 1%, poverty in these countries decline by 2.55%. Thus, the poverty alleviation impact of remittance is greater than its growth-enhancing effect because of its multiplier effect. When the result is compared in the two regions, the effect in the East is greater than in the west. Governments in Sub-Saharan Africa should work towards smoothing the flow by reducing the cost of transfer, to promote saving by the recipient households so that remittance will be made more productive and tackle problems of transfer to bring the information flow to the formal way.

The Key Drivers of Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa and What Can Be Done About it to Achieve the Poverty Sustainable Development Goal

The first Sustainable Development Goal targets ending poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030. And one of the most remarkable achievements during the MDG era was the significant decline in the share of the extremely poor in the global population, leading to the global attainment of cutting the extreme poverty rate to half its 1990 level by 2015. However, Sub-Saharan Africa remained the only developing region where the MDG 1 target was not achieved. Based on the updated poverty line of $1.90 a day, poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa significantly lags other developing regions. Understanding the key drivers and ways of tackling poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa becomes one of the pressing development challenges of our time. Our empirical estimates for the period, 1980 to 2013, show that the key factors significantly feeding poverty incidence and poverty depth in the region include high income inequality, oil-dependence, institutionalized democracy, high prevalence of HIV among the female youth, and increased civil war episodes. On the other hand, the key drivers significantly reducing poverty in the region are higher levels of economic development (income per capita), higher general government final consumption expenditure, higher official development assistance and aid received, urbanization, and access to improved water source. The policy implications are discussed.

Returns to fertiliser use: Does it pay enough? Some new evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

The low level of modern inputs adoption by African farmers is considered to be a major impediment to food security and poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. The government of Burkina Faso, following the example of a number of other countries in the region, launched a subsidy programme in 2008 to encourage farmers’ uptake of chemical fertilisers and foster cereal production. This article explores the importance of fertiliser profitability in explaining the relative, apparent low use of chemical fertilisers by farmers in Burkina Faso. Using large-scale plot data, we estimate maize yield response to nitrogen to be 19 kg/ha on average and to vary with soil characteristics. Profitability, which we measure through the calculation of a marginal value cost ratio, is estimated at 1.4 on those plots which received fertilisers, with significant variations across regions. For those plots on which fertilisers were not applied, we predict that fertilisers should have been profitable in most cases under the current level of subsidised fertiliser prices. These findings suggest that the low uptake of chemical fertilisers might have been driven by factors other than profitability, including insufficient supply of subsidised fertilisers to farmers in need. Our results also call for increasing the availability of credit to farmers in order to encourage adoption of chemical fertilisers. Finally, our results also show that not taking into account the endogeneity of nitrogen use in the yield equation may produce biased estimates of the maize yield response to nitrogen.

Policy change towards implementing harm reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa

Opiate use has been documented in 36 countries in Africa, with its prevalence ranging from an estimated 2.3% of the adult population in Seychelles, to 1% in Mauritius, and 0.3% in Kenya (Ministry of Health of Seychelles, 2011; UNODC, 2014). Injecting drug use has been reported in 28 African countries, with increasing evidence of linked HIV epidemics (Bouscalliou, Evanno, Proute, Inwole, & Kanran, 2016; Kurth et al., 2015; Lepretres et al., 2015; Matiko et al., 2014; Nyandindi et al., 2014; Scheibe et al., 2016; Eluwa et al. 2013). Two scenarios characterize the diffusion of HIV among people who inject drugs (PWID) in the Sub-Saharan African region: there are countries, such as Kenya and Tanzania, that have moved from a long-established generalized HIV epidemic to a recent mixed epidemic with high HIV prevalence among key populations, including PWID; and there are concentrated HIV epidemics among PWIDs emerging in low HIV prevalence countries, such as Mauritius, Seychelles and Zanzibar. There is now wide consensus in the region that the adoption of the comprehensive package of nine evidence-informed interventions recommended by United Nations (WHO, UNODC and UNAIDS, 2012), and the United States President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) tenth intervention, namely outreach, can help significantly reduce new HIV and hepatitis infections among PWID and their sexual partners. The global evidence in support of combination HIV prevention for PWID is compelling (Degenhardt et al., 2010; MacArthur, Minozzi, & Martin, 2012), and this has framed initiatives supported by PEPFAR in the region since 2010 towards fostering policy change supportive of the development of harm reduction. The combination of interventions promoted includes mutually reinforcing biomedical, behavioural, and structural interventions, which are not only evidenceinformed but rights-based as well as community-owned. Countries have begun to endorse and develop a package of HIV prevention intervention for PWIDs, including to varying extent, medically assisted therapies for treating opiate use and addiction, low threshold access to antiretroviral HIV treatment, needle and syringe distribution and exchange, sexual behaviour change communication, and community outreach. There is also a need for structural interventions to address critical social, legal, political, and environmental enablers of HIV risk. The policy environment for harm reduction has significantly improved in the region over the last five years. This has enabled

Poverty and Terrorism in Africa: The Debate Continues

While poverty is not the root cause of terrorism, it is one of a myriad of factors that contributes to the progression of terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa, especially domestic terrorism. Poverty has contributed to an environment that has enabled terrorist organizations to draw support. Supporting poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa is the right thing to do for a number of reasons, regardless of its minimal benefits in the fight against terrorism.

English

This study derived eco-climatic indices; a moisture quality index, onset and cessation dates, hydrologic growing season and Aridity Index all for the period (1950-2006), in addition to using National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration an Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer images to derive a Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index map. These derived eco-climatic parameters were integrated using Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. The overlay was hinged on a theoretical basis which holds that the variations of the Aridity index, cessation dates, length of the hydrologic growing season and vegetation index are directly proportional to eco-climatic zone changes while those for onset and MQI are inversely proportional. The quantitatively derived eco-climatic index and related maps identified five eco-climatic zones; wet, humid, sub-humid, dry sub-humid and semi-arid as against the three classic regional climatic zones. The eco-climatic map further unveils progressive transformation or southwards shifts in the boundaries of the regional climatic zones. Thus, the accurate delineation of the current eco-climatic zones would be essential for providing adequate information needed to achieve food security and sustainability of the physical environment that is fundamental to disaster risk reduction in sub-Saharan Africa.   Key words: Northern Nigeria, climate change, rainfall variability, southwards shifts, eco-climatic zones, food security.

Growth, Inequality and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa: Recent Progress in a Global Context

The present study employs recent World Bank data to shed light, in a global context, on the transformation of changes in income and inequality into poverty reduction for a large number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The study begins by discussing SSA's progress on poverty. Next, it presents data on how various African countries have fared in terms of the incidence of poverty relative to other countries, with special emphasis on the period since the mid-1990s, when SSA generally experienced a growth resurgence. The paper then decomposes performance on poverty into changes in income and inequality for a sample of SSA countries that have the requisite data. The paper finds that recent progress on poverty has been considerable, in contrast to the earlier, 1980–early 1990s, period. Compared with the progress in a global sample of countries, however, progress has been mixed: nonetheless, although African countries lag behind the Brazil, India, China and Russia group of countries as a whole, many of them have outperformed India. Furthermore, while income growth is found to be the main engine for poverty reduction in SSA in general, the role of inequality is crucial in certain countries. Viewed in a global context, moreover, the low levels of income have inhibited the effectiveness of income and inequality improvements in reducing poverty in many African countries.

The role of forests and forest products in poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa in the 21st century

This study briefly examines the role of forest in poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa in the 21st century despite the effect of deforestation and degradation. This sub region is rated as the second region with the highest proportion of poor people globally, i.e., 325 million people. Income in the sub region has fallen below the World Bank poverty line of $1.25 per day for developing countries. In fact 45% of the population live on less than $1 per day, with two thirds of the population living in rural areas and small-holder farmers accounting for 80% of the poor. Although about 1.6 billion people live on $1–2 per day, signifying improvement in living standards, it is incomparable to income levels in developed countries. The region is therefore characterized by hunger and starvation, diseases, illnesses and under development. In the sub region, the Gini coefficient is 0.44, indicating a high incidence of poverty. Countries worst hit by absolute poverty in the sub region are Nigeria, Mali and the Central African Republic. Consequently, there is an urgent need to improve the welfare of the population of this sub region through available natural resources, such as forests, where modern technology also still lags far behind. It is therefore recommended that forest policy in the sub region be focused on forestry initiatives that will encourage access to forest resources and in turn increase the well-being of the poor through the natural bounty of the goods and services from the forest. Furthermore, forest food consumption must be encouraged among the rural poor through appropriate agroforestry practices, along with enhanced literacy, as well as education for processing and marketing of forest products in regional markets.