Poverty just like development, is a buzz word that defy unanimous definition. Poverty is sometimes misconstrued as low level income alone but the phenomenon is multidimensional and covers areas such as knowledge,freedom, etc.The monetary notion of poverty uses poverty-line as a threshold for measuring poverty while the multidimensional approach to measuring poverty contend that there are several deprivations that debase the dignity of people and therefore must be taken into account when talking about poverty.Ghana made some efforts by halving its level of poverty before the coming into being the SDGs. However, since the implementation of the SDGs, Ghana’s record on poverty is not the best despite some marginal gains.
According to the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights,
“The benefits of record levels of economic growth experienced over the past decade have gone overwhelmingly to the wealthy. Inequality is higher than it has ever been in Ghana, while almost 1 person in 4 lives in poverty and 1 in 12 lives in extreme poverty. Spending on social protection is very low by the standards of comparable African countries and remarkably little is spent on social assistance. Ghana has a number of admirable social programmes, but few convincing plans for funding many of them adequately. As a result, a large number of Ghanaians do not enjoy their basic economic and social human rights and the prospects that Ghana will meet many of the Sustainable Development Goals are not encouraging.”
-(Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, 2018)
This clearly shows that, in as much as the country is progressing in terms of monetary value, there is no trickle down effect on the general populace. This means that wealth are concentrate in the hands of very few wealthy persons.
The Ghana Statistical living Standard Survey put it as;
“one person in five lives in poverty and one in eight lives in extreme poverty”.
-Ghana Statistical service living Survey
This also shows the disparity among the society when in comes to income distribution. There are more Ghanaian who cannot afford three square meals. Ghana's wealth has seen astronomical growth for the past two decades yet, its wealth is controlled by few wealthy politicians and business men. Currently, Ghana is Africa leading producer of gold yet its mining has not benefits mining communities talk-less of the entire Ghanaian populace.With the current trend, it'll be difficult for Ghana to to achieve SDG 1 and other goals that are closely linked to elimination of poverty.
However, it’s worthy to note that we’re doing remarkably well in terms neolibral economic standards but with little trickle down effects thereby increasing inequality.Until Ghana makes conscious efforts to redistribute wealth and nationalize its resources, the country would continue to see huge disparity between the haves and have-not and the resulting effect could be insecurity that could explode and cascade across the country.
In fact, the following concluding remarks by the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights report, 2018) sums up everything about the state of poverty in Ghana.
“Every country has people living in extreme poverty, but not every country has record economic growth levels and the capacity to take sustained and effective steps to eliminate much of the extreme poverty among its citizens. Ghana is at a crossroads and must now decide whether to continue existing policies that will further enrich the wealthy and do little for the poor, or make fiscal adjustments that would lift millions out of poverty and bring them into the agricultural economy in ways that would contribute significantly to economic growth. Choosing to eliminate, or not to eliminate, extreme poverty is a political choice for a country like Ghana. When 3.5 million children live in poverty and more than one third of those live in extreme poverty, a human rights proponent would bemoan the violation of many of the rights of those children. But an economist would also point to the immense loss of human capital involved, the costs to the economy and the future stunting of potentially productive citizens”.
-Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights report, 2018)
As said earlier, the best way to ensure equitable of national resources is to depart from neoliberal economic doctrines and how it measures poverty. The State of Ghana should nationalize its resource and be harness for the good of the subalterns.
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