Livelihoods and rural poverty reduction in Tanzania

Like other sub-Saharan African countries, Tanzania is caught up in a process by which previous structural adjustment conditionalities have been replaced by the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). This paper utilizes research on rural livelihoods in 10 subvillages in the country's Morogoro region to derive policy inferences relevant to the capacity of the PRSP to deliver its promises for poverty reduction in rural areas. Research findings show that rural poverty is strongly associated with lack of land and livestock, as well as inability to secure nonfarm alternatives to diminishing farm opportunities. The rural poor encounter a public sector institutional context that is neutral or blocking rather than enabling for them to construct their own pathways out of poverty. The PRSP process needs to address disjunctures between its macro-level goals and debilitating local-level institutional contexts, if real gains in rural poverty reduction are to be realized. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.