Analysis:
How the poverty cycle was broken
A surge in primary school enrollment and completion has been one of the outstanding results of the EDPRS. (file photo)
A few years ago, about 60% of Rwandans lived below the poverty line – lacking adequate food, education, medical services and access to safe drinking water.
As the country had just emerged from war and genocide that devastated the health system, infant mortality ranked among the highest globally with about 90 out of every 1,000 new born babies dying and for every 100,000 mothers, 750 of them died in the process of delivering their babies.
Prospects for economic growth looked extremely grim as nearly 90% of the population barely managed to eke out a living by tilling tiny exhausted plots. Children of school-going age roamed villages while teenage girls became mothers – driving fertility rates to above six children per woman.
When the government launched the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS) in 2008, it was received with pessimism because poverty was so deeply entrenched in Rwandan society that it was inconceivable any such intervention would achieve any immediate change.
President Paul Kagame, who spoke and the launch of the second EDPRS last week, also recalled the skepticism and pessimism because the targets seemed too ambitious.
But that pessimism has been shaken up with new figures showing that EDPRS has delivered a remarkable 12% reduction in the number of Rwandans living under conditions of poverty and economic deprivation.
This means that over the last five years, more than one million more Rwandans gained access to adequate food, safe drinking water, good health and education services among others.
Only 45% of the country’s population of 10.7 million can still be characterized as poor down from about 60% in 2006.
What has changed since then?
Over the last five years, there have been interventions aimed at improving access to quality education that has resulted into improvement in teacher to pupil ratio of 58:1, down from 70:1. At the same time, primary school enrolment has gone up to 91.7% – just a few percentage points shy of to 2012/13 national target of 95% and the UN Millennium Development Goal of 100%. With a primary school completion rate of 81%, more children have not only enrolled in class but have also stayed to complete primary level and proceed to secondary schools.
There are reasons to be happy about expanded access to education as a tool to fight poverty. The longer girls stay in classrooms, the longer it takes them to start producing children and hence a reduction in the phenomenon of child mothers. Child motherhood is not only risky to the teenagers but to their babies as well. Moreover, educated mothers not only give birth at the right age, but also have basics knowledge of taking care of children. It is therefore not surprising that as more girls keep in school, national fertility levels have dropped to 4.6 over the past five years.
Healthy nation
A reduction in the number of infant deaths to 50 per 1,000 births from about 70, and the number of mothers dying while giving birth from 750 to 487 per 100,000 births is a direct result of improved access to proper medical services.
Today, not only has the government rehabilitated the broken infrastructure, but has also put in place policies that have enabled 89% of the population to be under health insurance.
It is not only medical services that have helped improve health conditions among Rwandans. Nutrition and access to safe drinking water have played a pivotal role.
A rise from 64 to 74.2% in the number of people able to access clean water attests to this. This is a remarkable step towards the MDG of 82%.
While interventions in health, education and water made tremendous contribution to poverty reduction, there appears to be a clear understanding, at policy level, on how interlinked socio-economic problems in the country today. That is why what the president describes as “home-grown” solutions have played a bigger role in delivering this achievement.
One of such programs is the one-cow-per family. Initially intended to improve nutrition by bring milk to the dining table, this single cow has turned out to be the double-edged sword that has broken the poverty cycle.
Not only has it delivered the milk, but has also brought income – which has been used to provide other basic necessities such as salt, sugar and soap and in some instances medical bills and school fees.
Some beneficiaries of this have revealed that even food and vegetable production from small family plots has improved courtesy of manure from this single cow.
Yohani Batiste Bakinahe, a peasant farmer in Runda sector in Kamonyi district, recently told this newspaper that he has witnessed a turn around in his life, thanks to the one cow.
“I am now assured of food and I am able to satisfy my family’s needs. I am also able to pay school fees for my three children. Before I start using the manure from the cow, my land used to yield very little, even though I sometimes used to apply artificial fertilizers. But I now produce about 100 kg of beans on the land where I used to get only 30 kg.”
Bakinahe’s is not an isolated case. National pood production has picked up significantly with more land under irrigation and increased us of manure. Figures show that total land area under irrigation increased from 15,000 acres to 17,363 as of last year. This, together with several interventions in agriculture is responsible for the current food surplus of an estimated 500,000 tons of beans and maize.
Such seemingly small interventions in agriculture have had an impact on the broader macro-economic stability of the country in the face of both internal and external shocks. According to the ministry of finance, the economy grew by an average rate of 8.5% – the highest in the region, on the back of increased food production.
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Posted by Edward Ojulu
on Feb 13 2012. Filed under Features, National, Weekly Highlights.
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how do they compile these numbers???? i really think we are in a serious situation here and we should drop this attitude of celebrating numbers … you read this and you think Rwanda has finally became a paradise, but then again i look around me, i see jobless youth who are eating once a day, and parents whinning because they can’t afford the bursary, i go in the country side and i see people who can’t afford the mituel ….yet i read in the newspaper that only 45% of Rwandans can be characterised as poor very funny !!!!!! are that 45% leaving in Rwanda or in the confine of Nyarutarama ????? we should really start to get real with this situation…… minecofin and statistics should be sober and their stats should reflect the true picture of this country, otherwise we think we are fooling the donors into praising us but what we are doing is that we are fooling ourselves……..
to be get out a vicious cycle,
1st you have to appreciate the vicious cycle objectively
2nd we should accepts facts not hiding from them or denying them, those are the two steps us Rwandans need…….
yes we can be orginised but we overestimate our capacity and we don’t like to discuss our failure