
<p>DAKAR (Reuters) &#8211; Democratic Republic of Congo’s economic growth is expected to slow slightly in 2020 to 5.4%, according to a government budget proposal published on Sunday.</p>



<p>The Central Bank in April predicted gross domestic product (GDP) would grow by 5.9% in 2019, though the International Monetary Fund expects growth this year of 4.3% because of lower copper and cobalt prices.</p>



<p>Reporting By Edward McAllister; Editing by Gareth Jones</p>


DRC’s GDP growth is expected to slow slightly to 5.4% in 2020

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<p>In 2018, real GDP in East Africa grew by an estimated 5.7 per cent, slightly less than the 5.9 per cent in 2017. Economic growth is projected at 5.9 in 2019 and 6.1 per cent in 2020. To speak on the effect that the ongoing global trade wars and oil price fluctuation have on the East African economy, Charles Robertson, Global Chief Economist at Renaissance Capital joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


Global economy becoming increasingly fragile due to trade wars, this is how it’s affecting East Africa

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<p>Rwanda’s economic growth grew by 12.2 per cent from April to June this year, compared to 6.7 per cent in the same period last year, according to the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR). But what are the reasons behind this double digit growth? For answers to this, Deputy Director General of National Institute of Statistics Rwanda, Ivan Murenzi joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


NISR declares double digit growth in economy: To what does Rwanda owe this?

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<p>Earlier this week, National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda shared that Rwanda’s economic growth grew by 12.2 per cent from April to June this year, compared to 6.7 per cent in the same period last year. Also the Ministry of Trade and Industry shared the government’s plans to upgrade and construct new strategic petroleum reserves in a bid to improve the country’s fuel security. Joining us to digest this and more, Collins Mwai, Journalist of The New Times Rwanda joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


How Rwanda’s growth is driven by industry, service and agriculture

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<p>Uganda is seeking $3.5 billion in private investment to expand its power-transmission network in attempt to curb spending without slowing its economic growth. Also, a $3.5 billion project allowing exports of Ugandan oil via Tanzania will proceed after both countries held talks and met with businessmen. For more on this matter, Research Analyst at Crested Capital, Oscar Emasu joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


Increased spending potentially widens budget deficit to 8.7% of GDP: Uganda Market Watch

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<p>Despite significant economic growth in Africa, there’s minimal improvement of lives primarily because the continent lags behind in terms of financial inclusion. To discuss how smarter use of data can help drive up financial inclusion, Hennie Bester, Lead at the Insight2Impact joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


How smarter use of data can improve financial inclusion

By <span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/sam-jones-195757">Sam Jones</a>, <em><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/united-nations-university-694">United Nations University</a></em> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/inge-tvedten-805051">Inge Tvedten</a>, <em><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/chr-michelsen-institute-3056">Chr. Michelsen Institute</a></em></span>

<p>What does it mean to be poor? On the face of it, this may not sound like a very difficult question. In developed countries, almost all official and everyday definitions refer to poverty in income terms. In this sense, low consumption power (income) and poverty are essentially synonymous.</p>

<p>Outside of developed countries, a similar view of poverty frequently gets headlines. In its global comparisons, the World Bank has adopted the (in)famous poverty line of <a href="https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/746163-what-is-the-1-90-poverty-line-and-based-on-this">US$1.90 a day</a>. So, people with daily real incomes below this amount form part of the global poor – thankfully, now a diminishing group. </p>

<p>One might dispute exactly how and where such a poverty line should be set. But the idea that being poor means not having an adequate income often seems uncontroversial.</p>

<p>Of course, among academics things are rarely so settled. Between economists, there is <a href="https://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/abs/10.1596/1813-9450-5432">disagreement</a> about whether poverty should be measured only in monetary terms. In other areas of social science, there is a tradition of scepticism that suggests standard quantitative definitions of poverty can be <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220380600884068">misleading</a>. </p>

<p>Representing poverty as a kind of well-defined objective condition, like an infectious disease, focuses attention on the symptoms and immediate consequences of poverty. It risks diverting attention away from the underlying structural causes and diverse experiences of the poor.</p>

<h2>Challenging official narratives</h2>

<p>In a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X19300117">recent paper</a> we explore contrasting views of well-being in Mozambique. Our interest reflects the country’s controversial track record. From the early 1990s until recently, Mozambique achieved one of the strongest sustained periods of aggregate economic growth of any country. Yet <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10220461.2012.707791">some</a> argue this growth has largely not trickled down, leaving many behind.    </p>

<p>Official poverty estimates undertaken by the government are of the classic quantitative or economic kind. Here a set of basic needs is identified and costed. Households consuming goods worth less than the cost of a minimal basket are deemed to be “poor”. Applying this definition, data from national surveys shows consumption poverty has declined over the past two decades at a steady, but not especially rapid, pace. </p>

<p>Today, almost half of all Mozambicans continue to live in absolute poverty. There are also large spatial gaps in well-being. For example, there is much lower poverty in the south of the country, around the capital city, reflecting widening levels of consumption inequality.</p>

<p>To provide perspective on this official narrative, a range of <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/6161-reality-checks-mozambique-final-report-2011-2015">bottom-up studies of poverty</a>, including our own, have been conducted by anthropologists in different parts of the country. These diverge in both form and content from the economic approach. </p>

<p>Indeed, the very starting point of this research has been distinctive. The intention was not to apply a pre-given or conceptually static definition of poverty, from which a count of the poor could proceed. Instead it was to probe local perspectives on well-being, the diverse forms of disadvantage, and the kinds of social relations in which disadvantage arises.</p>

<p>A main finding that emerges from the anthropological work is that we cannot see the poor without seeing the better-off. Local grammars of poverty – namely, the terms used to describe who are better- or worse-off – consistently distinguish between socially marginalised individuals and those with strong local social connections. </p>

<p>Perceptions of deprivation do highlight material deficiencies, such as a lack of food or clothes. But social relationships are vital to cope with vulnerability (shocks) and to facilitate social mobility. Being poor is intimately connected to one’s perceived “position” in a wider society and, through this, one’s scope for upward movement.</p>

<h2>Self-reinforcing disadvantage</h2>

<p>The anthropological view highlights the complex and often fairly localised ways in which the powerful, sometimes politically-connected, hoard opportunities for development. This reinforces existing divides and limits the social and economic mobility of the most disadvantaged. </p>

<p>For instance, the National District Development Fund in Niassa, Mozambique’s northern province, was seen as a main source of money for investment in (rural) economic activities. Formally, in allocating the funds, priority was to be given to agriculture rather than businesses, women rather than men, and associations rather than individuals. </p>

<p>But we found that the funds had been systematically co-opted by local <em>influentes</em>. These included traditional authorities, male entrepreneurs and the governing party elite through an intricate system of social relations of exclusion and bribes.</p>

<p>Other vignettes from the lives of the poor point to the diverse mechanisms through which disadvantage is reproduced. This is often linked to specific cultural practices that empower certain groups above others. They also point to the self-reinforcing nature of social and economic disadvantage. </p>

<p>For example, we met a single mother who had lost large parts of her harvest to drought two years in a row. She had struggled hard to put all her three children to school, but with no crops to sell and no well-placed family to support her, she could no longer pay the bribes necessary for her children to move up classes. We also encountered instances where people cut themselves off from vital relationships to avoid exposing themselves to the embarrassment of having failed and so as to preserve their dignity.</p>

<h2>Making sense of disciplinary divides</h2>

<p>How can we make sense of different disciplinary perspectives on poverty? On the one hand, it is tempting to seek some reconciliation. Surely, metrics of social capital or even subjective well-being can be added to existing measures of consumption power to provide a more complete characterisation of the poor? Or perhaps qualitative follow-ups among the consumption poor could be used to add local context? </p>

<p>Certainly, combined qualitative-quantitative approaches to poverty research have become popular and often yield richer insights than any one method on its own. Yet, as we elaborate in our paper, this somewhat misses the point. </p>

<p>There are fundamental philosophical differences between standard quantitative (economic) and qualitative (anthropological) traditions, which do not admit any easy fusion. These include differences in understandings about the form of social reality, what can be known about poverty, and how poverty is produced and reproduced.</p>

<p>For this reason, it is vital to allow separate and diverse perspectives on poverty to flourish. Each methodological approach has distinct strengths, limitations and policy uses. </p>

<p>The economic approach is essential to track economic progress over time on a consistent basis and identify households at greatest risk of consumption poverty (for example, to target social policy). But to uncover – and even resist – the inherently relational and often political ways in which poverty emerges and is reproduced requires a deeper, local, ethnographic touch. </p>

<p>Bringing these different perspectives into a meaningful dialogue with each other remains the next challenge.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121639/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important" /></p>

<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/sam-jones-195757">Sam Jones</a>, Research Fellow, <em><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/united-nations-university-694">United Nations University</a></em> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/inge-tvedten-805051">Inge Tvedten</a>, Anthropologist and senior researcher, <em><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/chr-michelsen-institute-3056">Chr. Michelsen Institute</a></em></span></p>

<p>This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mozambique-case-study-shows-that-poverty-is-about-much-more-than-income-121639">original article</a>.</p>

This Mozambique case study shows that poverty is about much more than income, here’s why

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<p>Last week in the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, Bank of Uganda moved to maintain the Central Bank Rate at 10 per cent. Economic growth in Financial Year 2019/2020 is projected at 6-6.3 per cent supported by the accommodative monetary policy that resulted in stronger growth in private sector credit, expansionary fiscal policy and multiplier effects of public infrastructure investments. Oscar Emasu, Research Analyst at Crested Capital joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


Bank of Uganda maintains repo rate at 10%

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<p>Domestic capital markets are a vital source of stable, sustainable finance and underpin a private sector associated with employment and economic growth. Yet, capital markets are underdeveloped across many African countries, CNBC Africa&#8217;s Arnold Kwizera recently caught up with Governor of Rwanda&#8217;s Central Bank, John Rwangombwa for more.</p>


Rwanda’s Central Bank Governor on growing domestic capital markets

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<p>Cultural diversity is a driving force of development, not only with respect to economic growth, but also as a means of leading a more fulfilling intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual. Joining CNBC Africa is Carole Karemera, Director Genaral at Ishyo Arts Centre to share more on this.</p>


Cultural diversity as a driving force for development


<p>NAIROBI (Reuters) &#8211; Somalia’s economy continues to recover, with growth expected to strengthen to 3% in 2019 from 2.8% last year, while inflation could ease to 3% from 3.2% over the same period, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.</p>



<p>Somalia has been in turmoil since 1991, when clan-based warlords overthrew Siad Barre and then turned on each other. Over the past decade it has been hit by famine and sporadic terror attacks by al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab.</p>



<p>“Somalia’s economy continues to recover, supported by vigorous activity in the construction, telecommunications, and financial services sector in 2018,” said Allison Holland, who lead an IMF team discussing Somalia’s Article IV programme, in a statement.</p>



<p>“But the outlook remains vulnerable to the still fragile security situation, climate shocks and the still developing institutional capacity, and more is needed to improve economic resilience, increase employment and reduce poverty.”</p>



<p>An Article IV consultation is part of the IMF’s mandate to scrutinise the economic, financial and exchange rate policies of its members.</p>



<p>The Somali government has broadened the tax base and strengthened tax administration, boosting domestic revenue almost 30% to $184 million in 2018 from a year earlier, and to $54 million for the first quarter of 2019, Holland said.</p>



<p>Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Richard Borsuk</p>


IMF says the economic growth in this East African country could rise to 3% in 2019


<p>PRETORIA (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa’s economic growth will shrink by at least 1.1 percentage points in 2019 and there will be up to 125,000 job losses if nationwide electricity blackouts persist throughout the year, the central bank said on Wednesday. </p>



<p>Ailing state utility Eskom switched out the lights across the country in February and March as low coal supplies, a severe cash crunch, and multiple failures at its ageing fleet of power stations throttled supply.</p>



<p>The debt laden state firm began by cutting supply by 1,000 megawatts before ramping up to 4,000 MW, leaving households in the dark and businesses across mining, manufacturing and retail unable to operate.</p>



<p>“Should these interruptions continue throughout 2019, it is likely to reduce growth by 1.1 percentage points,” the Reserve bank said in its Monetary Policy Review publication, the second for the year.</p>



<p>“Under these circumstances, employment is likely to be lower by an estimated 125,000 jobs, with around 48,000 jobs lost to the first shock and 77,000 to the second,” the bank said, referring to the mining and manufacturing sectors.</p>



<p>The review dimmed hopes for the economic rebound promised by President Cyril Ramaphosa and comes less than a month before national elections.</p>



<p>In its February budget the National Treasury forecast gross domestic product (GDP) expanding at 1.5 percent from 0.8 percent growth in 2018. At its policy meeting in March the central bank pushed down its growth forecast to 1.3 percent.</p>



<p>Bets of growth above 1 percent have helped the country cling on to its remaining investment grade credit rating from Moody’s.</p>



<p>Earlier this month the public enterprise minister said the government would help Eskom keep the lights on and resort to so-called stage 1 loadshedding – 1,000 MW of rolling blackouts – as a last resort.</p>



<p>But Eskom, burdened by debt of around 450 billion rand, said it needed more money in addition to the 69 billion rand bailout granted by the government, to keep the lights on.</p>



<p>That raised fears it may drag down growth and prompt Moody’s to downgrade the country’s sovereign rating to junk.</p>



<p>First quarter GDP data is only due in June, but indicators of private sector activity, business confidence, mining and manufacturing have already shown signs of a negative impact of the power cuts.</p>



<p>Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana; Editing by Susan Fenton and Emelia Sithole-Matarise</p>


Why South Africa’s GDP growth is likely to shrink by 1.1 percentage points in 2019

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<p>CNBC Africa&#8217;s Kenneth Igbomor also caught up with former CEO of Access Bank Aigboje AIG-Imoukhuede to get his take on the merger.</p>


Former Access Bank CEO speaks on merger with Diamond Bank

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<p>The Chief Investment Strategist at Standard Chartered, Steve Brice says global growth will be slower this year compared to 2018 with slight changes in where the growth will be coming from. He discussed the outlook for the global economy with CNBC Africa’s Esther Awoniyi.</p>


Expert reveals why global growth will likely slow in 2019

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<p>While applauding the economic growth across Africa in recent years, the Senior Vice President of the African Development Bank Charles Bohamah says the 4 per cent growth forecast for 2019 is not enough to make most African countries move from low income to higher income countries. He discussed this and more with CNBC Africa’s Kenneth Igbomor.</p>


AfDB’s Charles Bohamah talks on the state of Africa’s economies

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<p>By 2040, at least one in five youth will be based on the African continent. With 1.1 billion people in the working age demographics, the continent stands a great opportunity for economic growth. Dr. Modupe Taylor-Pearce, CEO Breakfast Club Africa joins CNBC Africa to discuss how leadership capacity among entrepreneurs and business leaders could help Africa harness this opportunity.</p>


Harnessing the potential of Africa’s youth

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<p>With trade tensions high and international trade investment low, the World Bank is predicting slowed economic growth for emerging markets this year. For Sub-Saharan Africa, the number is set at 3.4 per cent. Joining CNBC Africa for more is Rudi Steinbach, Senior Economist, World Bank Prospects Group.</p>


economic growth

DRC’s GDP growth is expected to slow slightly to 5.4% in 2020

Global economy becoming increasingly fragile due to trade wars, this is how it’s affecting East Africa

NISR declares double digit growth in economy: To what does Rwanda owe this?

How Rwanda’s growth is driven by industry, service and agriculture

Increased spending potentially widens budget deficit to 8.7% of GDP: Uganda Market Watch

How smarter use of data can improve financial inclusion

This Mozambique case study shows that poverty is about much more than income, here’s why

Bank of Uganda maintains repo rate at 10%

Rwanda’s Central Bank Governor on growing domestic capital markets

Cultural diversity as a driving force for development

IMF says the economic growth in this East African country could rise to 3% in 2019

Why South Africa’s GDP growth is likely to shrink by 1.1 percentage points in 2019

Former Access Bank CEO speaks on merger with Diamond Bank

Expert reveals why global growth will likely slow in 2019

AfDB’s Charles Bohamah talks on the state of Africa’s economies

Harnessing the potential of Africa’s youth

World Bank predicts slower global growth in 2019

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economic growth

DRC’s GDP growth is expected to slow slightly to 5.4% in 2020

Global economy becoming increasingly fragile due to trade wars, this is how it’s affecting East Africa

NISR declares double digit growth in economy: To what does Rwanda owe this?

How Rwanda’s growth is driven by industry, service and agriculture

Increased spending potentially widens budget deficit to 8.7% of GDP: Uganda Market Watch

How smarter use of data can improve financial inclusion

This Mozambique case study shows that poverty is about much more than income, here’s why

Bank of Uganda maintains repo rate at 10%

Rwanda’s Central Bank Governor on growing domestic capital markets

Cultural diversity as a driving force for development

IMF says the economic growth in this East African country could rise to 3% in 2019

Why South Africa’s GDP growth is likely to shrink by 1.1 percentage points in 2019

Former Access Bank CEO speaks on merger with Diamond Bank

Expert reveals why global growth will likely slow in 2019

AfDB’s Charles Bohamah talks on the state of Africa’s economies

Harnessing the potential of Africa’s youth

World Bank predicts slower global growth in 2019

News Tips

Advertise With Us

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