Government's Retreating Role On Development Initiatives Cause Permanent Poverty - Sivio Institute
Sivio Institute, a non-governmental (NGO) organisation focusing on governance across Africa with an initial focus on Zimbabwe, has said the state’s retreating role in development matters is worsening poverty on the continent and Zimbabwe in particular.
States have in the past two decades assumed a complementary role while international organisations and other NGOs are leading in developmental and social protection initiatives. It should be the other way round.
Many governments, including Zimbabwe, have witnessed the dwindling of revenue inflows making them unable to take initiative in solving issues affecting their people, leaving the role to be done by sympathisers.
In its 2021 Annual report, seen by Pindula News, Sivio noted that poverty-alleviating initiatives implemented in Zimbabwe need to be championed by the government and not donors. Reads part of the report:
The prevailing paradigm of development in Zimbabwe and across Africa is largely dependent on the superiority and efficacy of the market at the expense of state-led approaches and citizens’ agency. Such an approach consequently cripples local agency and engenders new forms of permanent poverty compared to temporary forms of poverty which in the past were due to temporary shocks. Given this situation, our approach is to identify ways of strengthening community philanthropy and other forms of agency as possible routes towards more sustainable approaches to inclusive development.
Zimbabwe’s economy has been going down in recent years, therefore, it is difficult for the government to be leading poverty-alleviating programmes.
As recently observed by prominent economist, Prosper Chitambara, NGOs are filling the gaps in public programmes and services that States have failed to perform or provide owing to limited fiscal space among others.
