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Rural poverty in Mali National poverty reduction strategies have reduced the proportion of the country’s poor people from 68.3 per cent in 2001 to 59.2 per cent in 2005. Still, Mali is one of the world’s poorest countries, ranking 175th out of 177 countries in the United Nations Development Programme’s 2006 Human Development Index. Three forms of poverty affect people in Mali:
More than 73 per cent of the country’s rural people live below the poverty line. Poverty is widespread in rural Mali, but it does not affect all poor people in the same way. Over the past decade trends have shown a shift in the geographical distribution of poverty. The rural inhabitants of the Sahelian and Sahelo-Saharan areas are predominantly farmers and agropastoralists who practise dryland subsistence farming to feed their households. They are Mali’s poorest people, with the poorest living conditions (nutrition, education and health) and potential (access to land, equipment, credit and employment). In recent years monetary poverty has increased among rural people in what were once the country’s most prosperous areas. These include the so-called cotton belt and the Office du Niger, where the public sector has invested significantly in hydroagricultural development. The increase in monetary poverty is mainly the result of the sharp drop in world cotton prices and the loss of competitivity of locally produced rice against imported rice. The causes of rural poverty lie in a combination of agroecological,
economic and institutional factors. Mali has natural resources and
major hydroagricultural potential, but their distribution is uneven
and they are not used to full advantage or managed effectively. Among the factors that contribute to rural poverty are inadequate and costly basic social services, rural isolation, the cost of energy and a weak information and communication network. Source: IFAD |
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