The Capability Approach and the Sustainable Development Goals: Inter/Multi/Trans Disciplinary Perspectives

This book demonstrates how the capability approach to human development can contribute to the realisation of the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The capability approach dictates that success should not be measured by economic indicators but by people leading meaningful, free, fulfilled, happy, or satisfied lives. Drawing from a range of disciplinary perspectives, this book argues that it is vital that the focus for the SDGs should shift to benefiting the most vulnerable. Case studies from across Asia, Africa, Latin America (Global South), and the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia (Global North) consider how the capability approach can contribute as a practical framework to achieving the SDGs’ ambitions for social, economic, political, and legal progress.

The chapter on "education and sustained poverty escapes in sub-Saharan Africa" authored by CPAN analyzes the interrelationship between education (SDG 4) and sustained poverty reduction (SDG 1). It draws attention to the role of education as an asset supporting resilience, as well as other factors that combine with education to contribute to capabilities that enable sustained escapes from poverty. To investigate this relationship, the chapter synthesizes mixed-methods research by CPAN in Tanzania, Rwanda, Niger, Malawi, Ethiopia, Uganda, and rural Kenya. 

The chapter argues that a combination of multi-level factors supporting education has the transformative potential to convert into sustained escapes from poverty. Indeed, people construct strategies for escaping poverty using education as an instrumental asset, yet few achieve sustained escapes. To promote sustained escapes, there is a need for more and better-quality education certainly, but also for multi-level conversion factors that can contribute to education and wider wellbeing outcomes. These are policies that can be consciously directed as well as people’s own adaptive strategies, alongside processes of social change. Examples of factors that support education include labor market links, livelihood diversification, social networks, spousal collaboration, shifts in cultural and gender norms to support girls’ education, and an enabling policy context. This combination involving multiple conversion factors alongside education is argued to be ‘transformative’ in paving the way for sustained poverty escapes. 

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Tanzania Covid-19 Poverty Monitor: Urban and peri-urban areas

Tanzania had its first and most serious wave of Covid-19 from March to June 2020, and adopted the policy responses of partial lockdown, school and international border closures, and banned mass gatherings except religious ones which could be attended with social distancing. In June 2020 some of the strict measures like closing bars, hotels, schools, social events and other businesses were relaxed with some precautions while hygiene and sanitation practices remained in place. The then President of Tanzania, John Pombe Magufuli, instructed to stop publishing data on Covid-19 cases and deaths in late April 2020 for several reasons. First, he was sceptical about the corona testing kits, the process and the integrity of the laboratory technicians. Second, giving data to the citizens was of no help but created fear and panic. He declared that people should pray and rely on God and on traditional medicines while doubting Covid-19 tests. The second and third waves of the pandemic occurred from November 2020 to March 2021 and from June 2021 to October 2021 respectively. The fourth wave occurred from November 2021. President John Pombe Magufuli passed away on 17th March 2021. After his death his successor, President Samia Suluhu Hassan, resumed the publication of Covid-19 cases and deaths and committed Tanzania to a vaccination programme.

She also opened up for external financial assistance to support government’s efforts in overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic in the country. While lockdown was short lived and partial, the fears induced by the pandemic lived on in people’s cautious healthcare practices through to the end of the second wave of Covid-19 (November 2020 to March 2021). The healthcare practices included wearing a face mask, washing hands with soap and running water and avoiding handshakes. And some of the effects of the lockdown, healthcare practices changes resulting from the pandemic, and global economic pandemic related trends have lived on till the present. The third and fourth waves of the pandemic occurred from June 2021 to October 2021 and from November 2021 to the time of the research on which this bulletin is based (March 2022) respectively.

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Covid-19 monitoring in rural Tanzania: The pandemic exacerbated pre-existing factors negatively affecting wellbeing

Tanzania avoided a recession due to Covid-19, mainly because it had little stringency in its Covid-19 policy responses. However, the country suffered a decline in real GDP growth rate, and poverty incidence declined marginally between 2020 and 2021. This Bulletin is based on a study which was conducted to disaggregate understanding of who has been affected among the poor and vulnerable, investigate the intersecting disadvantages which may have made it harder for some households and individuals to remain resilient while others were impoverished, and contextualise Covid-19 impacts within a broader examination of the multiple causes of poverty dynamics before and during the pandemic.

The study was conducted in Kongwa and Kilolo Districts, Tanzania, through 48 interviews, which included 27 Life History Interviews (LHIs), 12 Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), and nine Key Informant Interviews (KIIs). It was found that Covid-19 exacerbated pre-existing factors which were negatively impacting interviewees’ incomes but that it did not have adverse economic effects in some areas such as in Rural Kongwa District.

The poor were most affected by an inability to meet costs to practice preventative measures against the pandemic and subsequent treatment if they succumbed to it, and lower earnings due to missed casual labour work. The non-poor were also affected by higher costs incurred on preventive measures against the pandemic and getting treatment if they succumbed to it, and also by a decline in customers for their businesses, and rises in costs of inputs while the prices of products and other goods they traded declined. The main factors for wellbeing improvement before the pandemic were a diversification of crops planted, the acquisition of more land for agriculture, agricultural mechanisation, and doing non-farm businesses besides farm activities. The main factors for wellbeing improvement during the pandemic were avoiding the high costs on Covid-19 infection prevention and treatment, increases in customers after Covid-19 diminished, and getting a loan and using it successfully on income-generating activities. A big policy implication of the findings is that measures to prevent impoverishment are generally very inadequate.

In order to prevent impoverishment and keep poverty declining, even in the face of pandemics like Covid-19, it is recommended that Tanzania needs to target more chronically poor and vulnerable people by strengthening measures against destitution (movement into Wellbeing Level, WB 1); take proper measures for non-pandemic factors which impede poverty reduction, even when there is no pandemic, such as climatic factors, qualities and quantities of agricultural inputs and technologies, agricultural marketing and selling, and taxation on various businesses; and improve social services including education and health.

Authors: Lucia da Corta, Kim Abel Kayunze, Judith Samwel Kahamba, Constantine George Simba, Andrew Shepherd, and Halima Omari Mangi

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Translating Growth into Poverty Reduction.Beyond the Numbers

Edited by Flora Kessy, Oswald Mashindano, Andrew Shepherd & Lucy Scott

Tanzania is a politically stable, much aided country that has consistently grown economically during the first decade of the millennium, while also improving its human development indicators. However, poverty has remained persistent, particularly within rural areas. This collaborative work delves into the reasons why this is so and what can be done to improve the record.
The book is the product of both Tanzanian and international poverty experts, based on largely qualitative research undertaken within Tanzania by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC). The authors highlight and discuss the importance of macro- and micro-level causes of the persistence of poverty.  The latter, on which the book is focused, centre around a negative dynamic affecting a large number of poor households in which widespread failure to provide household food security undermines gender relationships and reduces the possibility of saving and asset accumulation which is necessary for escaping poverty. This results in very low upward mobility. Vulnerability is widespread and resilience against shocks minimal, even for those who are not absolutely poor. Through an in-depth and broad analysis of poverty in Tanzania, the book provides alternative conclusions to those often repeated in the poverty discourse in international and local arenas.
The conclusions were reached with the specific aim of informing political and policy debates within Tanzania.

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