BBC World Debate Why Poverty?

we're in Johannesburg South Africa's largest city where more than a billion dollars of stocks are traded daily Africa's economy is growing fast second only to Asia and yet almost half of the continent lives in extreme poverty globally - as wealth reaches new heights a quarter of all young children still don't get enough to eat who's to blame and is it time for radical solutions join me for this BBC World debate why poverty hello from Johannesburg I'm Xena but are we where talking poverty inequality and why despite all our advancements technological progress and increasing wealth this is a twin scourge which still plagues the 21st century our panel Tony Blair former British prime minister who counts his Africa governance initiative amongst his many pursuits and activities since leaving office Oba is a co easly former nigerian government minister until recently she headed the Africa Department at the World Bank and is now leading a new Africa economic initiative for the Soros Open Society Foundations Vandana Shiva scientists and grassroots activists from India who champions the rights of small farmers and who is never afraid to speak passionately against prevailing ideas and lastly miletti I'm Becky South African author of Architects of poverty why African capitalism needs changing he's also chair of the South African Institute of International Affairs also in the studio is an invited audience of business leaders academics activists students and people from diverse communities here in South Africa and also further afield welcome to our panel and our audience now before we start our debate let's look at an excerpt from a film together with this debate is part of a global event hosted by the BBC and fifty other broadcasters reaching an audience of half a billion people why poverty hello one of these people are you you've had a long day at school or was it the office now you are home ah relax maybe you want to watch television these people live in constant fear of eviction they had already been full see what's wrong in this place people die so we can get mobile phones give heard it are before haven't you children working as slaves you feel a mixture of sorrow and cynicism yes the world is richer than it has ever been and yet there seems to be more poor people than ever economies have been on the edge of a financial and economic precipice you are falling asleep you're going to have a strange dream it starts with this thought if we want to make poverty history then first we need to understand the history of poverty poverty wealth power powerlessness are connected now your soul floats all the world's early civilizations see all the millions of little farmers with their little fields everything looks poor except for the one or two palaces with the kings and Chiefs live the era of colonialism has begun the Spanish have conquered your country you see your people are dying world wars come and go there's even a Great Depression what you still feel things are getting better there was an idea called trickle-down economics if you could just get the economy to grow everybody would would benefit book sometimes a rising tide lifts all boats that's nonsense it's been a remarkable increase in inequality very marked declines of people at the bottom parties on the way out slowly but surely there are fewer people who live on over the holiday today than five years ago than five year before an entire year before it's very unique well in some countries modern order but it's kind of happening you are appearing in a TV game show it's called who wants to be a billionaire who wants to be a billionaire and now the question for you on which the billion dollar prize rests what reduces poverty today is it a a the communism si state spending or D globalization so some sobering thoughts there in that film Tony Blair fundamentally the main driver of poverty is greed and inequality inequality of opportunity certainly I mean that is the that's the big reason why so many people are poor if they don't get the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty to get a job to get a standard of living but I think there are two big things that have changed in this debate that are very important for us to notice the first is that despite the fact that there is still huge numbers of people a billion people who live in in abject poverty actually over this past 20 years we have seen almost a billion people lifted out of poverty as well now it's true a lot of that has come from China and the huge number of a 600 million people lifted out of poverty there but also in Latin America also indeed in parts of Africa so you know it's not that the situation has not had any improvement at all you know when we think back on the the g8 summit that I chaired and we then had the debt relief and the increases in aid and so on plus the fact that there are there is a has been some real economic growth six out of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world the past few have been in Africa there is progress secondly how when I say so as long as there's progress then Tony Blair it doesn't matter if you have a financial rich elite no of course it does it does matter it does matter absolutely because because if you end up with a closed circle at the top who keep other people out that is not just bad for poverty it's bad for the economy but the second thing that I would say has changed is that I think we know a lot better today what actually works to create effective path out of poverty and that is all to do with the quality of governments and I think the single biggest challenge we we face right now is for governments to be a to take the steps necessary on things like infrastructure electricity power education and world growth we'll look at that in a moment but Vandana is it just as Tony Blair says the lack of equality of opportunities that's holding people down I think what Tony said assumes that the pathetic people lying out there you've got to give them a rope and pull them out the reality is people are pushed to poverty the original state of human beings is not poverty in the Amazon people aren't poor in the sense they're not deprived they have their food they have fresh water they have a rich culture they have medicine their own medicine plants poverty is created first by grabbing the resources of the people Africa a continent whose poverty is deeply linked to the appropriation of land historically and today the biggest land grab taking place in history is creating new poor people but new poverty is being created in the heart of affluence in Europe in America but I mean it doesn't really matter if you look at the OECD countries they've had the people there but a reasonable standard of living and have had for a long time and yet there is also inequality so does it matter as long as people are lifted out of poverty where there are just a few getting rich well the point is we are living in times where the new wealth is highly concentrated in a few people's hands and there is a new language of oligarchy emerging now in my country I've analyzed the handful of new oligarchs who made it to the tent top billionaires grabbed the land of the people benefited from the privatization of electricity so poor people have lost access to the rich getting richer and the poor are getting poorer as a result are you saying a clear link they're totally interconnected because voters privatized of course one company makes more wealth but people get cholera because they lost the access to drinking water if seed is patented and privatized a quarter million Indian farmers commit suicide debt I think the bigger is what 270,000 owe themselves over the fifteen years yeah all related to mechanisms of creating wealth by taking away the comments of the pictures sticking on this specific point then I mean Obi do you agree with Vandana that if the power is concentrated in the wealth in the hands of just a few people that it means that the vast majority at the bottom are going to become impoverished and if you look at Nigeria what's the figure that the World Bank had not that long ago 1% of the population enjoy about 80 percent of the country as well about most even oil you know Xena I think that the most important thing is a focus on how we can ensure that there's better distribution of the benefits of growth however the right point that she makes is that we might move we must be mindful of the fact that if the poor are stock in pernicious poverty while a very insignificant percentage of people continue to do better the Society's source is seed for its own implosion Millette seen Becky when you look at South Africa where we are here it's the most unequal country in the world now and is that's what something here isn't it there are more and more people becoming impoverished in what is by rights a very rich country in terms of natural resources well actually in South Africa we're getting people at the bottom who are rising and and a big part of that is to get is due to redistribution like always saying or social welfare programs however at the top and 10% of the population is share of the national income is getting higher and higher and higher so yes South Africa is very unequal but they are those caveats which I have changed I mean Tony Blair when you you say that we need equality of opportunity sounds like we need more than that really we need a kind of no visa arguing for equality of outcome everybody accepts that you know they're always going to people you're richer than the others but you do expect a kind of reasonable equality and it sounds like we're not really getting that don't you think of course but let's be clear when we talk about equality of opportunity that's not the be-all and end-all but it's a huge start because the fact is for many people in the poorest countries they have no opportunity but the interesting thing because we could all sit here and say the poverty is terrible and it's awful and so on and so forth the question is what do we do and that's why I focus so much of what I do now on governance because I I really do believe that if governments take the the right decisions if you have for example no corruption in government right corruption is a huge problem if you have proper rule of law if you have government investing in infrastructure technology today is transferable if countries have electricity and power if children have access to technology there's a huge amount of opportunity that comes with that so all I'm saying is when you look at this issue of poverty the critical answer is to say why is it that actually there have been some improvements and how do we now take this to the next level Fantana yeah I think to begin with the argument of opportunity when the beginning of poverty the route of poverty and the route of absolutely obnoxious wealth in concentrated form the 1% 99 percent that Occupy movement refers to ignores the fact that opportunities are deliberately being closed for people creating a new poverty when you take away the land that a farmer can use to provide food for their family that's a source of poverty when you privatize water electricity that's closing the opportunity and I think the injustice built into the idea of creating a new growth by commodifying that which was accessible to people in their resources in their livelihoods in their comments in their public systems that I think is vital because growth everyone is now talking about as a mismeasure it doesn't talk about how the growth was created how many forests did you destroy and the fact that instead of a trickle down we have a grab okay I don't think it's just a matter of saying look these nasty people at the top who do this here and and everyone else has their resources grabbed off them but to me it's not about nasty people update a nasty process well that in trenches sounds like you were saying there were nasty people at the top though not all not all rich people are nasty I think they've to be on create wedge when the system allows them to grab the result questions of the people but I think the most important issue really is this India like China has had very high growth figures in this period of high growth India beat Africa in the number of hungry people we become the Republic of anger why because land was taken from people why because a public universal system of food distribution was just will come to food in multi servant anybody wants to come in here and they're not like to go to the audience I mean the point I would like to make is that to human particular to heart so to both of them actually because one of them are coming at it from angles that can find a common ground at some point you're mediated her and the issue is I think Vandana is making the point that the quality of growth matters the structure of growth what kind of growth are we fascinated by the truth is we have seen the limits of growth that growth that is jobless would not offer the opportunity for increased income which is exactly what you need for the poor to be able to lift themselves out of poverty that being the case what we should be spending a lot of time trying to understand is how is it that we can diversify the sources of growth nothing obvious has put their finger on the problem of poverty it's actually inequality of power you have people with more power than the others and therefore they have more access to the opportunities that Tony's talking about and to the resources but but she is talking about and in my own country in South Africa this is very very clear South Africa in the middle of the 19th century David Livingstone came here and he one of the things that struck him was the health of the African population and David Livingstone was a doctor and he pointed out that the south african black population is much much healthier than the British population today we are one of the most disease ridden population why is level of HIV HIV with tuberculosis with all sorts of infectious diseases because of inequality of power or i OB am raised an interesting a point which i want to put to Norway's Deputy Development Minister who is here in our audience so is it very much that the Norwegian indeed the Scandinavian model is to have a high level of Taxation whereby you redistribute money from the rich whoever they are to poorer members of society well I think first of all we very fact that there is inequality in a society is a venom for society it roads trust between people and the erosion of trust is also the beginning of the decline of the economy and this is something that economists have now been left aside out of their economic models for years and I think now they're starting to realize that trust is it's an integral part for a thriving economy we come to Norway I'm there are two major ways of redistribution one is in employment another is taxation we have a very high taxation level and we do our best to try to reduce your distribute that that income but if I can mention the third which I think is even more important and that's the issue of including women in the workforce I mean we see today I mean when the oil country will come back to that but in in Norway we calculated that the the fact that three out of four Norwegian women are in the workforce means adding to the economy much more than the entire oil wealth past present future of Norway that is the most important equality indicator will come to oil in a moment I just come to the audience on this de pollo you are a an activist here in in South Africa on this issue of the need to have some kind of gender equality is vital in so many ways it is but I also think that we need to be very clear on the structural origins of inequality including gender inequality we're very good in terms of talking about the figures of where women are not but we need to understand that the labor market and international capital thrives on cheap labor which is often women's labor it thrives on surplus population we also need to understand that international financial systems are again very unkind to women in terms of collateral in terms of cracks s to credit in terms of any way of making meaningful contributions and an input to the economy and becoming citizens in terms of economic agency we cannot continue to be the recipients of largesse we must be placed at the center of all considerations I totally agree that and you are only going to be able to increase wealth if you involve all the workforce I entirely agree what the minister was just saying about the role of women and so on but I think we've got to have an honest conversation about this really the the other reasons why Norway has done so well is because for example when it's can its resource wealth it's actually put that in a fund that it is used then for the benefit of the country it has a strong rule of law it has a great education system it has a no corruption in in government and I don't think you can have this debate without looking at the countries that have succeeded over these past years you know you take South Korea the country in the 60s that was in the same position as many countries in the poorest parts of the world why have they done so much all right let us ask over here I mean Norway has what what do tax oil companies something like 78 percent - for land yeah OB Nigeria how much how much is what's the taxation level for your oil corporations in Nigeria it's not as high 78 percent let's face it you know I think that even the largest story is I think there's a point that Toni's trying to get it which is that we need to begin to look at some of the the constraints are - in occlusive growth beneficial good is it possible that poor quality of governance please a significant role in excluding majority of people from the benefits of Groot is it possible that just shoddy economic policies will exclude people from growth is it possible that not mindful of social inclusion as an important tool of Public Policy that governments can be pretending that growth is happening when a larger majority of the citizens is flooded from it but but the point that we need to strike is that Africa's structure of economy has not reasonably or significantly changed from what it was at independence even limonene the structure of the economy to change in order that it would take many more people in the process of its bureaucrat nigeria own countries you say huge oil wealth it's the biggest oil producer in sub-saharan Africa yet the number of people who are living on a dollar a day two dollars a day is actually increased where is your redistribution illegal you've got all that text evasion tax avoidance workers your flight they know yeah your redistribution happens at the level of government agency and that's where the issue of governance comes in so you need to be able to redistribute in a way that that natural resources translates to physical capital as well as intellectual or human capital and that forms the basis for the kind of growth that is dispersed and you're telling them all that because you've been a cabinet minister and like if it hasn't happened to see if I may David fine you're from McKinsey's you did a your intensity that fine reported a couple of years ago or so on the future of African economies thank you very much and we've just published a report on the issue of inclusive jobs in Africa I think firstly to talk about the opportunity Africa is the has a very large and young growing workforce it's going to be the largest workforce in the world by 2035 larger than China larger than India and it's actually going to be reasonably educated by 2020 our estimates that 50% of people in Africa will have a secondary or tertiary education the issue is the resources sector which is 25 of GDP only employs 1% of people it's not going to solve the problem Africa needs a job strategy which is different from a growth strategy ok industrialization my name is bullying link abullah I'm from the University of South Africa you cannot limit the idea of growth as they create the only criterion of determining whether a population our country's poor or rich and we have to understand that if we enter into the conversation on poverty there must be other dimensions that are brought into the debate endogenous knowledge systems training of people to articulate themselves and to determine the trajectories of life that they want the valuing of the contributions of people to us the livelihood of societies I'm a bit troubled sometimes when you talk about governance issues and corruption immediately jumps up in the context of Africa because the debate never really reaches out who are the bribe us when the bribed are allowed to - to - to actually exploit your sovereignty who is it who is in here I'm giving an example security while the bribe is in your view briefly among the multinational companies multinational corporation themselves to be promoting economy or their own fighting in southern Africa the whole cases of corruption in South Africa the French companies buying opportunity now ok but you never know it is that we should disregard when we're talking because we tend to yeah yeah I know that's it we get a phone I mean maybe there's some maybe there's something from the corporate world but there are moves both in the United States and in the European Union to try to get greater transparency here as your burden from pan-african investment and research I think the contrast between Nigeria and and Norway got a bigger picture I mean up to five six years ago in terms of the World Bank report 60 percent of sub-saharan Africa surplus left the content nevermind getting too into proper governance and getting into dealing with issues of poverty it literally went to the X colonial centers so the issues of governance is not just at the national level but as you just alluded to going beyond UK and us we got to see what's happening to the global tax havens what's happening to these surpluses that these resource companies industrial companies infrastructure companies are extracting from the polar regions and it evaporates into the tax havens in Tony Blair obviously City of London oh no you're not Prime Minister anymore but you're British and the City of London is a huge financial center of course and we have seen some scandals emerging from there but some of this money surely ends up in Western capitals like a London no of course it does but I mean just to say by the way there are now very tough laws in the US and the UK and in Europe against corruption and those laws are enforced and secondly actually a lot of the extraction now is done via Asia in fact not simply by the West but if you look at the problem for an African country let's say or take a developing country in Latin America right so you take a country like Brazil or or like Colombia it's got a big resource base when they move to the next stage of development they've then got to be making the goods with the raw materials in Brazil in Colombia in Africa right that is the the objective so the question is how do you do that and you don't do that unless you have a an education system that is educating people for the skills they need and be a system of government encouraging the development of native business and enterprise that allows that whole value-added business sector to develop and that's what lifts people up in Tony Blair you've got your African Governance initiative and it's clear from the title what that means but do you think they ought to be you to perhaps have a European governance initiative well we've got another Robyn's in Europe and the point is Toni's talking about the next stage of development if the next stage of development of Europe is what we are seeing in Greece and Spain then shouldn't Africa in Asia be thinking differently about the model of development that's one well the second is the torque governance without talking democracy and people's rights I think is basically removing the foundations qualities you're all ganging up on you so deeply I know but I'm very happy I'm used to it I was picking up the point that we had from the audience which is you know there's a range seen from the European Union that 850 billion dollars euros rather is lost in the European Union to tax evasion which is illegal and 150 billion euros lost in tax avoidance which is legal but sometimes barely legal if you had all that it would pay off all of the EU Stetz handsomely so it isn't that's why I say to you we need a European governance initiative course we need to take measures to crack down and tax evasion and so I was so forth but I mean let's also be very clear that the the the issue for countries that are trying to develop now I'm not saying that governance doesn't include democracy and civil rights of course it does but that's all part of the same picture which is if you want countries to grow and lift people out of poverty then the system of governance the policies that are pursued effective implementation of policy is absolutely central and that's the reason why countries because we have examples have moved in 30 years from being very poor countries the countries with a higher standard of living so all I'm saying is a debate about poverty that ignores that dimension is the debate about poverty that anything so for example I would say that we need to build on what we have so far achieved say in Africa we now know that Africa over the last decade has been able to grow at an average of 5% and above what must we do to improve that growth and to ensure that it I think you're gonna reply to something at Tony Blair's what I want to say on that is that we must we must begin to look at the structure of the African economy agriculture is an important all right facet for poverty reckon you bring us to agriculture and that's something that we will turn to now because of course when poverty is so extreme that it leads to hunger is the most worrying issue as our global population in fact expands agriculture which provides a livelihood to 2.5 billion people is lagging behind population growth and the prospect of more starving people has led many experts to call for another green revolution by the use of technology better seeds fertilizers and of course capital but although the issue of food security is vital there is a vast disagreement on how it can be achieved as this film shows hungry and angry another food riot breaks out at the streets energy struggling to buy the most basic of foodstuffs these are desperate times Africa known for its fertile land low priced agricultural real estate has become the target of wealthy investors nearly 60 percent of the world's available arable land is in Africa and it's estimated that nearly half of the hungry people are also farmers so this is actually centered where the fields will be when we develop mimin adele kovitch made his name building sugar plantations across Africa in 2010 he was in Mali to try and finalise the country's largest foreign investment the marquales sugar project known as Sossaman the plan was to least 200 square kilometers in the country's most fertile farming region for a sugar plantation and factory this would mean forcibly displacing thousands of local families many of whom have farmed this land for generations yeah but unlike most agribusiness investors in Africa Mima is asking these farmers to join in the scheme as contractors who actually creating a new class of commercial farmers that will grow out over time but not everyone is enamored of the scheme many small farmers see this as an invasion of their way of life money or need a I don't know do cremini erratically you fool a needy the big question is can foreign-backed agriculture be part of the solution to poverty in Africa and elsewhere Vandana you are known globally not only in your native India but you do work with small farmers all over the world and advising governments and organizations and so on do you think that by large emerging nations the developing world have got their Agricultural Policy right the first thing is people forget that 80% of the food of the world is being grown by small holders particularly women we don't look at that secondly the small holder actually maximizes nutrition per acre that land grab I will still call it a land grab even if the farmers are getting involved that sugarcane will probably go to make ethanol because in today's world it pays more to divert food crops like soya or corn or sugarcane to run our cars than two feet beep you took that biofuels here yes oh you're opening up a whole kind of worm so the three reasons why this model will not be a solution you want to leave are you not romanticizing the small farmer I'm not just a with a small holder I left closing with the methods at UVI six centuries I left physics to do work on ecological farming because I realized that there was so much manipulation of the data in agriculture high L seeds actually overall per acre less nutrition higher incomes for farmers no net income goes down that is why the Indian farmer is committing suicide why are half the people in the world who are hungry so it's a land grab land grab no totally land-grab it's a capital intensive system of production that gets the farmer trapped in debt so the farmer sells everything they grow to pay back the debt for chemicals and seeds and debt is a poverty creating mechanism though it's a hunger creating metrics a lack of proper credit or no it's a lack of access to a logical agriculture knowledge the whole world as an international assessment for agricultural science and technology report of the UN released right here in Johannesburg that shows we double and triple food production by leaving agriculture and small holders and putting it in women's hands and most that's always it is the only before what the UN admits it is in the hands of a gross and once again it's not the way okay Tony Blair your view on that agribusiness perhaps leads to a land grab and leave it in the hands by I think it's my role at this show to respectfully disagree with the non there III I um I think you've got to start from where the facts really are the fact is there are African countries that should be food exporters there are food importers there are many farmers that don't get the opportunities they have because they don't get the fertilizer in the seed and the support they need it is a huge problem for small holders and I see this in the countries and we which we work where there isn't proper infrastructure where there aren't proper roads so they can get their goods to market and where there isn't a proper system into which they can sell their goods so I think there is a whole series of things that again governments could do to ease the position of small holders make them more effective make them more productive and that's really what they want now as for the agribusiness that comes in depends what it is I mean I don't think I think it's very nice very nice to say the guy we've just seen on the the TV show are by the way I know nothing about this project but I think it's been unfair to describe them as a land grabber I mean it is look people who are coming into an invest in a country some investment can be good some can be bad but we shouldn't categorize all investment that comes in as bad and some of the intellectual capital that will in with major companies who are able to invest in countries will do the country a lot of good will help its development this was argument for Madagascar and the government was thrown out because they trended over economic comments it brings in innovation it brings tonight you keep the wrong kind of innovation we don't need more toxic syn our food we don't need more monocultures we don't need more farmers driven off the norm everybody's free nobody's talking about GM the Food and Agriculture Organisation Isis are an obsolete technology that came out of the war there are much more sophisticated ways to renew soil fertility I think that one of the things I found with farmers because I had to interact with them a lot as as as vice-president at a bank they really don't care so much about the ideologies they don't care where you come out on the ideology the farmers are asking for access to the fence that would increase their productivity what we saw there about molly-molly actually most of the agricultural wealth in Mali is in livestock you find today that the Malians don't milk their goats they don't know they're cattle they are importing powdered milk from Europe now who is to blame for that Africa imports 150 million dollars worth of food imports every year and yet other than half of the world it really never the land it really does go hungry yes but but a point the point you have to understand is that historically there was a shift to cash crops as a result of the era of colonialism but you need something else and so you need something to sell and so now Africa is moving more toward the food security issues and soda staples are becoming very important for the farmers while you definite is the kind of comprehensive agriculture policy it's not just national policies the dumping of subsidized meat and dairy products from Africa for on Africa 400 billion dollars is the agricultural subsidies that have such a been mentioned in the OECD countries I and WTO opens up for dumpy you know what I'm going to say Tony Blair I see I mean isn't it 75 billion dollars worth of agriculture subsidies you're feeling the European you I'm you know I I like to take responsibility for most things but actually of course people like myself be longtime opponents in fact of the EU subsidy policy in the Common Agricultural Policy even though it's very difficult to change but you know you could get rid of the EU subsidy policy and still have a problem and that's why I'm sorry but I no no no back that there I'm going to disagree okay the the EU subsidy policy these thoughts they it distorts the opportunity wages et cetera yourself the problem if you get rid of it wouldn't solve the problem we solve some of the problem because the issue is that the farmer needs to have the incentive on the business of which they can obey but it's the food is there in Africa reason yes wherever you have a famine even in Ethiopia at the height of the famine in the eighties there was excess food production in the West to the airport sooner but the food is a favorites the lack of access the same in India degree project which has doubled food production through ecological methods but in Tony Blair at that point even if you remove the subsidies look at India fruits and vegetables 40 percent of fruit and vegetables ever that smell sorry ah that's not but I but 50 percent of food in the industrialized countries is rotting but but can raising the plot here yeah I can't go back to obvious point which I now want to ask a over I'm supposed to answer the question why are the African economies not changing their structure that's the point well I want the answer okay okay so I would say that the basic issue has been a trap the trap of mono cultural economies meaning that because the rent from resources enables the elite to have a good life they often have no incentive because the society is not demanding for measures of accountability in governance the elite have no incentive for pursuing the kinds of policies that diversify the economy and then bring in more of the citizens to the benefits the situation of governance cannot and is never ever divorced from the way the economy is controlled and run the economic elite is also the political elite that undermines democracy so therefore accountability is impossible and it serves the interest of economic elite which is economic extraction the question is how you change the situation since I spent 10 years as UK prime minister let me just tell you one thing I learned and that is the difference between campaigning about how dreadful things are and actually taking the policy measures that change the reality and I remember when I was trying to change the British healthcare system and I campaigned on it and fought an election won an election and then I was in power and I kept on making the speeches and then we didn't quite change it fast enough and then they said well GART make another speech and I said I'm fed up with making speeches I actually want a policy that works so I agree with you you've got this political and economic elite in some of these countries but the question is how do you change it and you change it in part by making sure you open up the system put in proper rules have measures against corruption have proper rule of law and start to change your country and if we don't tackle these issues then what we end up with is a lot of campaign rhetoric that is fine and gets a round of applause but doesn't actually change anything on the ground when I was the student and I'm listening to all the it we used to say there has to be a revolution the governance enough we've had African independence for 50 years in our own country we've had a democratic government for 18 years but what is changing for the people of Africa very little because the elite are blocking and the poor everywhere also they're blocking my sister but now how do we remove we can scrub the you're calling for a revolution no no I'm saying it sounded like they never I haven't I have an idea of what a revolution could mean see what has happened in the in the telephone sector of concept okay of Africa that's the revolution how did that happen because of sensible policies today the best asset that the average African poor has is actually not the motorcycle it's the telephone because they use artists get prizes instead of getting rises fidelity it helps them for health services education agriculture you touch them in many right of Life Enhancement I should call you comrade Obi they're calling for a revolution so kind of Justin some final closing thoughts from you on our debate why poverty why it has persisted and how you think we can best go forward to ensure that it doesn't err well David is over zeyneb it's obvious that no single sector has the answer to the reduction of poverty you need government you need a private sector and you need the citizens and each of these sectors have their specific rules but the rule is play better when there is collaborative partnership between these sectors and I would come out on the side of governments must have the right systems of governance and they must be accountable but above all they must be interested in economic policies especially social inclusive policies that share the benefits of economic growth to allege a number of just citizens that's the way you begin to reduce poverty let's see well I think the the consensus coming out yeah that we really fast and for most need the redistribution of political power as long as we don't have a redistribution of political power that incorporates the people at the bottom of the pyramid we will never overcome poverty because the ones at the top of the pyramid want to keep it that way so the key is redistribution of political powers more equalization of political power in our societies and on a global scale as well Fantana we are in the land where apartheid was created and apartheid was put behind and we are now in a moment of human history where there's an ecological apartheid being created where more and more of the resources jet that generates livelihoods and lives are being concentrated in a few hands so the first thing we need to remove poverty is more equitable distribution of resources where they'd be land or water or seeds or biodiversity or in the climate issue our equal share to the atmospheric Commons second I do think we need to put bad measures behind us growth is a very very ill-conceived measure it worked fine for the period of war to mobilize resources for the war it's defined on the basis of if you don't if you produce what you consume you're not producing which means all of Africa's production all of women's production is written off we need to take real production into account and that is why so many countries are moving beyond the growth measure to well-being and let's not forget that wealth never meant money it meant well be that's where we need to move it will come from justice and Tony Blair how can we make sure that poverty is consigned to history I think we should be far more practical about it I think we should actually learn from what has worked because not all countries have remained in the same situation in the last 3040 years so the idea we can learn nothing from the way the world's developed is absurd we've had major developments in Africa in Latin America in Asia learn from them learn from what works and what doesn't and realize that at the heart of this will always be politicians taking decisions but those decisions are better taken and they're more likely to lead to the outcomes we want if they're taken within systems that are democratic and accountable that are open that are honest and where there is a focus on policy making that is practical and evidence-based less about ideology which i think is very much a 20th century thing and far more about what actually works and how can we make that work and do the best for our people and you know one of the things I I again learned as Prime Minister I was listening early to talking about the grassroots that's fine you know people always used to say to me listen to the people and I would say I am but unfortunately saying different things so it's not it's not always easy to do that in the end you've got to have decision makers but if you have a system of government that is open honest and effective you're far more likely to get the decisions of benefit and a responsible private sector I agree with that OB we've finished on a point of agreement and I thank you all very much and indeed also to my audience here in Johannesburg that brings us to an end to this debate on why poverty the reasons why it still persists are clearly many and varied but what is obvious is that there has been a collective failure to make the required effort to eradicate poverty once and for all from me Zainab Badawi in Johannesburg wherever you're watching goodbye you

Channel: THE WHY

Views: 852,986

Rating: 4.7506361 out of 5

Keywords: Why Poverty?, Why Poverty, Whypoverty?, Whypoverty, films, film, poverty, docs, documentaries, shorts, education, health, personal, social, global, international, local, regional, future, past, environment, climate change, resources, water, food, hunger, starvation, aid, charity, survival, awareness, globalisation, trade, taxes, equality, inequality, change, you, them, us, Business, BBC, World, Debate, South Africa, Johannesburg, Tony Blair, Oby Ezekwesili, Moeltesi Mbeki, Vandana Shiva, Zeinab Badawi

Id: KNIEb3injpc

Length: 47min 16sec (2836 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 30 2012