Causes of Rural Poverty

This essay discusses the causes and factors that affect poverty in Zambia, particularly in rural areas. It highlights the multidimensional and complex reasons behind rural poverty in Africa, including economic growth, geographical context, corruption, brain drain, AIDS/HIV, illiteracy, tribalism, and lack of education and training programs. The essay concludes with recommendations for improving agricultural activities, transport facilities, social services, health sector services, and education system to eliminate poverty.

Running head: CAUSES OF RURAL POVERTY
Foundation of Development Studies

CAUSES OF RURAL POVERTY 1
Every human being desires to survive, prosper and grow and wants to live without hunger, fear, and
suffering. An individual always tries to find out ways by which their life could be better and then tries
to achieve those means. At present, 1.4 billion people consist one-fifth of the global population, are
not able to fulfill their basic necessities consisting food, clothes, and shelter. The highest segments of
global poor are children, women, and men living in rural areas. These are farmers, herders, migrant
workers, fishers, the artisans and home-grown people whose regular struggles to fulfill their basic
needs capture everyone’s attention (Nations, 2018). One of the highly poverty affected countries is
Zambia in South Africa, where 64 percent population is living in poverty. This essay will be
discussing the causes and factors that affect the poverty in Zambia (Kabuya, 2015).
Zambia is popularly known as the Republic of Zambia, a landlocked country of South Africa is facing
sharp rising in poverty, where every four in five people are not getting proper food, clothes, and
living. The highest percentage of poverty prevails in a rural area where 89 percent of the total rural
population is suffering from the conditions which cause the death of individuals. The reasons for rural
poverty are multidimensional and complex which involves culture, gender, climate, social policies
and markets (Goff & Singh, 2013). Some of the major reason of poverty in the Republic of Zambia
can be considered as follows:
According to World Bank, there are two contextual factors which are directly linked to poverty: the
first one is the arrangement of economic growth is not equal to some in relation to populations and
some sectors. Another factor concludes that economic growth has not resulted in increased incomes of
poor, enough to raise them out of poverty conditions. World Bank further explained causes to describe
these two factors broadly, related to political, economic and institutional areas, which affects poverty
among rural population (Carvalho & Nsemukila, 2013).
In Zambia, economic growth programs have traditionally been focussed on the urban areas and capital
formation industries like transport, textiles, mining, and construction. But the majority of the poor
originates their livings from small sectors like agriculture, fishing and sectors I which growth and
development opportunities have not been introduced for the improvement. Further, the output of the
sectors like commercial agriculture and mining, having high levels of ownership fails to convert into
household gains and income (Bigsten & Tengstam, 2010).
Another cause is linked to the geographical context of development and growth. As per the analyses,
urban areas have been grown in terms of the development of markets, shifting to cashless transactions.
Whereas the poverty affected population tend to reside in rural areas which are not even connected to
markets, schools, hospitals so that an individual can use basic facilities required for living. The rate of
poverty in the agriculture-related areas is more than 80 percent. Even though Zambia is having a lot of
water and land still it is facing food insecurity at very high level. The main reason for this problem is
the insufficient policies and resources provided by the government for both food production and its

CAUSES OF RURAL POVERTY 2
distribution. Food production does not contain more notorious products which are required by the
people who are affected by poverty. Food distribution policies are also not centralized to the areas
suffering from diseases and poverty. It results in increasing level of loss of life and also has a direct
impact on the poverty (Ng, Kan, Lim, & Ting, 2013).
One of the main reasons of poverty in Zambia is the corruption channelized by the government and
deficiency in utilizing the public resources in the development of the poor. Government policies and
budget are not centralized to poverty as shown by the national budget of Catholic Commission.
External debt is also a reason for poverty in the Republic of Zambia as the country is repaying more
than $150 million yearly loan to set off the external debt due to which health, education, and other
services are not getting enough finance to develop the livelihood of poor (Alkire, Jindra, Robles, &
Vaz, 2016).
Zambia has the highest rated of brain drain syndrome in the world. Highly educated and trained
personnel like a scientist, teachers, doctors, administrators are professionals are migrating to another
country paying high incentives and remunerations. If this personnel is given good incentives to stay in
Zambia and work for the government or business development then there will be chances of poverty
mitigation. Similar to brain drain, AIDS/HIV has affected a large number of potential women and
men of the country. Most of the HIV affected people are in their prime years like the 30s and 40s. The
country is losing its population in their early ages that are creating an educational gap. In order to
eliminate poverty, a country needs healthy population which can contribute to the growth of people as
well as economy. Likewise, illiteracy is a huge limitation to removing the poverty in the country as
the majority of the population cannot even read and write. Education is one of the major contributing
elements to the economic development that cannot be ignored. The government of Zambia has not
done much effort to mandate education practices in Zambia. Many of the Zambians do not go for
further studies because of insufficient funds and opportunities (Ochieng, 2016).
One more factor that contributes to the poverty in Zambia is Tribalism, which includes giving
preference and opportunities to the people of similar tribes. The existence of tribalism eliminates the
chances of development of economy because people of different tribes are downgraded and not
provided equal opportunities. Due to tribalism, deserving personnel is not able to utilize their skills in
removing the poverty in Zambia (Green, Sissons, & Lee, 2017).
Poverty can only be decreased by introducing strong governance and institutions and equal allocation
of resources. In Africa, strategies designed to fight against poverty are not wholly implemented
because the financial resources allocated ends up by the corrupt individuals, it indicated the existence
of corruption in governance. Corruption creates more poverty and leads to an imbalanced society. In
most of the African countries including Zambia, people have huge areas of unutilized or underutilized
land. This is because of lack of education and thinking of following traditional ways of doing things.

CAUSES OF RURAL POVERTY 3
Some landowners just use their agricultural land to grow crops only for their survival and do not sales
those in the market. This is a major contributor to the poverty of Africa. For improving this condition,
the government is required to introduce basic education and training programs related to farming
techniques and to make understand the farmers that they can get a fair value of their crops by selling
them in the market. This will also help in increasing their standard of living and removing poverty
(Korankye, 2014).
It can be concluded that poverty is considered as a sin to any economy and when its level is high in
both urban and rural areas than it can become a danger to the existence of an economy. Above
mentioned problems are the main reasons for rural poverty in Africa. These causes cannot be
eliminated overnight as these most of these reasons are based on the proper functioning of
governance. Since poverty is in the severe state in rural areas of Zambia, it is required to make
agricultural activities more effective by improving transport facilities and facilitating fertilizers to
farmers. The government should realize efficient budget expenditure strategies to finance more social
services in the country. Health sector services should be improved as it helps in marinating human
resources of the nation. The education system is required to be developed by facilitating free
education to the poor so that they can become educated and help the country in elimination poverty.

CAUSES OF RURAL POVERTY 4
References
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