It is almost impossible to define development
without understanding poverty because absence of one is the presence of the
other.
Reaching a common and universally agreeable
definition of poverty is not only a mammoth task, but a controversial one.
Unless people understand the intricacies of poverty, it is hard to escape it.
As Africans, we have accepted to be seen as
poor based on indicators and frames which are foreign to us.
And we have adopted the philosophy of
development at face value, parochially as gospel truth without challenging it.
Of course, when you look at people dying of
hunger in Somalia, this argument may sound fallacious, but experience shows
that success follows those who forge or stick to their own ways than those who
follow.
Understanding poverty is not an easy task,
because as products of colonial orientation, we have been socialised not to
understand it, but to believe in it.
We are poor because there are so many of us
who believe in certain factors that define poverty. Human kind has never been
good at challenging beliefs.
Perhaps before defining poverty, let’s ask a
few questions.
Is poverty what you know you don’t have or
what they say you don’t have? Is poverty what you have been socialised to think
you don’t have or things that you need to have?
Wikipedia provides a basic definition of
poverty as the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions
or money.
If you believe this, then Adam and Eve were
poor from creation notwithstanding the rich garden in which they domiciled.
In fact they didn’t have to posses anything.
Wikipedia elaborates further by stating that absolute poverty or destitution is
inability to afford basic human needs, which includes clean and fresh water,
nutrition, healthcare, education, clothing and shelter.
The second definition gives one enough meat to
chew on. I base my argument on basic human needs.
Of interest in the fight against what we have
been made to believe is poverty, is the framing of the concepts of basic human
needs.
This to a great extent has created unnecessary
pressure, expectations, anxiety and is a source of conflict among many African
countries.
Let’s take Somalia, for example. The country
is currently faced with the worst food crisis in recent history. Thousands of
lives are in danger if food is not provided urgently.
In a country where traditional meals were meat-based
you would expect non- governmental organisations to be providing cows, goats
and sheep to the starving people, but alas, they are sending in cereals which
were introduced to their diet by the Italians, French and British many decades
ago.
So drought and poverty are shaped by the
absence or failure of a food type which is foreign to or unsustainable to
Somaliland.
And if they had continued with their
meat-based meals, drought would mean failure of pastures not of crops.
It is the same with many African countries,
including Zimbabwe, where we are socialised to believe that Western concepts of
development hold more value than our own hence they impose poverty on us
because we want to be like them.
If they decide today to make iPads a basic
human need, then the entire country will be poor of iPads.
A villager who owns a thousand cattle is seen
as poorer than an urbanite that drives a car.
A person who eats wild fruit for vitamin C, no
matter how nutritious they are, is seen as desperate unless they buy oranges
and apples.
Mopane worms are among the most nutritious
delicacies and yet many fly-by-night food security experts see them as
desperate measures, which warrant food aid intervention.
A country with a low literacy level is also
considered poor. Literacy is seen here as the ability to read, write and count
in a language foreign to us and yet we know that each society has its own
cultural way of doing so.
Conclusively, we are poor because we lack the
Western attributes that define basic human needs not necessarily that we lack
what we need.
China has refused to budge and today the world
is forced to accept mandarin as one of the main languages.
Some are even learning how to eat like them.
That’s how parochial we have become. China is successful because they refuse to
be defined.
That African life is built around its natural
environment does not matter for as long as we are not living the same life as
New York or London then we will remain poor in their eyes.
But even in the process of being dragged into
the Western way of life, there are some limits. And again, only big brother
China has broken the limits with ease, style and success.
At a recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit
US President Barack Obama cautioned his Chinese counterpart by stating that
China must play by international rules when it comes to trade and must stop
poaching US intellectual property.
“For an economy like the United States — where
our biggest competitive advantage is our knowledge, our innovation, our
patents, our copyrights — for us not to get the kind of protection we need in a
large marketplace like China is not acceptable,” said Obama.
In simpler terms the US is saying stop being
successful by stealing from us. But does China care? They refuse to be defined.
There you have it. If they control your
poverty then they can control how far you can develop, but if you understand
your poverty, you can achieve your goals. Ask China.
TAPIWA GOMO
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