Xavier Sala-i-Martin and Maxim Pinkovskiy’s research discusses how the poverty level in Africa is falling. The researchers focus on the poverty rates, distributions of incomes and welfare and inequality indices in African countries between 1970 and 2006. Using the variables mentioned above, they were able to prove that poverty has indeed reduced in African countries irrespective of their past or present state. The countries used to analyze the poverty rates include Ethiopia, South Africa, Nigeria and Congo-Zaire. The results of the study reveal that if the current trends continue, then the goal of halving the number of people whose incomes are less than a dollar in a day will definitely be achieved. This is because Africans are working towards eradicating poverty. The growth that took place between 1995 and 2006 did not only benefit the elite groups but it was widespread across the various groups of people (Martin and Pinkovskiy, 33). The article displayed the results obtained in graphs and tables in the appendices illustrated the poverty projections and rates, poverty reduction and sensitivity analysis.
Michael Hobbes article discusses how big ideas and concepts are destroying development in an international level. In the article, Hobbes (3) mentions the PlayPump project that was meant to provide water for the locals in the rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa as one of the projects that begun well but ended up failing. In the book, Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, it is discovered that some of the projects begun by Westerners do not even help the poor people and sometimes it only makes them poorer. This dysfunction is attributed to the public, media, governments and the donors as each one of them plays a role in it. Michael Kremer is a professor who did a trial in Kenya before actualizing his project of providing textbooks to students. Unlike others, his trial was successful as it became a movement (Hobbes, 5).
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The article also discusses various countries such as India, where if people are given a choice between cigarettes and foods such as rice, they opt for the cigarettes. There are many factors contributing to the failure of projects in African countries. These factors are a combination of politics, laws, infrastructure, history, the state of harmony and even the individuals themselves (Hobbes, 15). In spite of this the writer still believes that development can occur in Africa however slow the process is. Hobbes (16) believes that in order to ensure there is development in the region, the chasing of ideas in terms of fad diets has to stop and successful programs have to be allowed to run. Non-governmental organizations should be allowed to invest in various laces and countries that are rich should spend more time on how to influence the huge political and economic power.
Works Cited
Hobbes, Michael. "Stop trying to save the world: Big ideas are destroying international development." New republic (2014).
Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, and Maxim, Pinkovskiy. African Poverty is Falling... Much Faster Than You Think! No. w15775. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010.
