Poverty policy in Africa and Middle East : a review of poverty monitoring

Abstract EN

Much has been written during the 1990s about poverty.

The main argument however, is that particularly in Africa, there is a dearth of information and that governments and donor agencies pay too little attention to this issue of poverty.

This crucially limits effective and timely action against poverty.

This paper analyzes the information that lies at the base of these debates.

However, it is now recognized that knowledge of poverty in Africa and the Middle East has increased during the last decade.

To illustrate this, the paper discusses information on trends and profiles of poverty.

Nevertheless, the process has just begun for providing decision makers with sufficient and timely poverty information.

At this time, information is still inadequate to rigorously cross-check, evaluate and answer significant questions which exist.

Specifically two critical questions are raised regarding the available poverty information: (a) data availability, timeliness and quality; and (b) usefulness of the available data for the type and range of information needed by policy makers