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Striving for growth, bypassing the poor? A critical review of Rwanda's rural sector policies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2008

An Ansoms
An Ansoms*
Affiliation:
Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp, Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Equity is complementary to the pursuit of long-term prosperity. Greater equity is doubly good for poverty reduction. It tends to favour sustained overall development, and it delivers increased opportunities to the poorest groups in a society. (François Bourguignon, speech at the launching of the World Development Report, 2006)

This paper studies the Rwandan case to address some of the challenges and pitfalls in defining pro-poor strategies. The paper first looks at the danger of a purely growth-led development focus (as in Rwanda's first PRSP), and evaluates the extent to which the agricultural sector has been a pro-poor growth engine. It then studies Rwanda's current rural policies, which aim to modernise and ‘professionalise’ the rural sector. There is a high risk that these rural policy measures will be at the expense of the large mass of small-scale peasants. This paper stresses that the real challenge to transform the rural sector into a true pro-poor growth engine will be to value and incorporate the capacity and potential of small-scale ‘non-professional’ peasants into the core strategies for rural development. The lessons drawn from the Rwandan case should inspire policy makers and international donors worldwide to shift their focus away from a purely output-led logic towards distribution-oriented rural development policies. In other words, the challenge is to reconcile efficiency in creating economic growth with equity, and perhaps, to put equity first.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 1 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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