UNDP Poverty Report 2000

Benin Country Assessment

Comprehensive Monitoring

Benin's poverty programme, based on the Social Dimensions of Development strategy adopted in 1994, involves improving macro-economic policies, targeting interventions to the poor and setting up a comprehensive poverty monitoring system. To date, monitoring poverty has been the programme's main accomplishment.

Called the Social Change Observatory, the monitoring system is a network of autonomous and complementary units, such as the Urban and Rural Observatories, the Price Observatory and the Labour Market Observatory. The observatory's monitoring of household living conditions and responses provides policy-makers with timely and relevant information to make decisions.

The observatories, usually with three to five staff, operate through the technical units of ministries to strengthen the capacity to monitor the impact of poverty reduction programmes. Fairly inexpensive to operate and easy to replicate in other countries, the system has produced a valuable database and set of poverty profiles.

The Need to Link Monitoring with Policy-Making

The Benin system uses qualitative and quantitative surveys to monitor household living conditions. Covering both urban and rural areas, the qualitative surveys identify people's perceptions of poverty, wealth and personal well-being. Although meant to help the government implement better anti-poverty interventions, the surveys have not fully achieved this objective.

So far they have been used mainly to identify poorer groups and areas. For example, surveys show that the informal sector employs more than 90% of the non-agricultural labour force and about 40% of the entire labour force. But Benin's employment promotion programme has chiefly benefited unemployed school graduates and workers laid off from public enterprises.

Surveys also show that more than 80% of rural women are illiterate - and that rural people see little connection between more education and a greater likelihood of generating income or finding a job. But the country's education programmes do not appear to take this information into account.

The Emphasis on Economic Growth

Thus, although Benin has developed an exemplary poverty monitoring system, it has not used the informa-tion to develop a coherent and well-targeted national poverty programme. Part of the problem is the heavy reliance of the anti-poverty strategy on promoting economic growth.

Recognizing the need for a better set of targeted interventions, the government initiated in 1997 the Common Social Minimum strategy to provide people with basic educa-tion and health care, ensure food security, stimulate income generation and integrate rural areas into the economy. Then in 1998 the government adopted a national development plan (for 1998 - 2002) with poverty reduction as its ultimate goal and sustainable human development as its organizing principle. An advisory panel, with members from the government, civil society organizations, the press and academia, oversees the plan's formulation and implementation. The plan's chief focus is to promote rapid economic growth through structural adjustment.

The main challenge for the government is to integrate its two main development objectives: stimulating economic growth through structural adjustment and anchoring its poverty programme in the perceived needs of the poor. Serious constraints impede its ability to do so, however. Benin's external debt totals more than 60% of GDP, and its annual budget deficit is entirely financed by external resources.