Institutions d'aide et enquêtes sur la pauvreté en Afrique

Résumé En Fr

Aid and poverty : remarks on analyses of the standard of living in Africa. The 1990s has witnessed a revival of anti-poverty projects on the part of aid agencies. These have taken the form of surveys and developing of indicators, as well as operational projects aiming at improving the living conditions of the poorest. Based on examples drawn from the characteristics of Sub-Saharan African economies, this article attempts to show that these projects misunderstand certain mechanisms which can bring about a state of poverty, and, consequently, misunderstand the really vulnerable groups. In particular, the underlying conceptions of aid projects are restricted to a framework where income is expressed only in static monetary terms. They take little account of the environments of instability that are specific to these economies. Moreover, these aid projects do not take into account the institutions which emerge from these environments and which establish complex intertemporal insurance mechanisms ; these mechanisms use individuals as assets, but these assets are risky in themselves. The literature has already analysed these mechanisms in the framework of strategies of diversification within the family or household. This article adds the multiple networks that individuals acquire in order to cover themselves from risk, even though these networks generate costs. Situations of poverty result from the failure of these processes, compared with other structural situations deriving from the inability to work, due to the unexpected events that can affect individuals, or the demographic configuration of their kinship. In the first part of the article, the manner in which currently existing surveys of poverty are carried out are critically analysed, as well as the context of existing constraints within aid agencies. The second part lays out a conception of possible explanatory processes of poverty, based on the notion of claims in the future on individuals, as these claims represent today's wealth. The incorporation of this conception into commonly used instruments of measurement could improve the latter's efficiency, although the political economy of aid, in addition to that of recipient states currently in crisis, is not favorable to a change in concepts or plans of action.

La décennie des années 90 a connu un renouveau des projets de lutte contre la pauvreté de la part des agences d'aide. À partir d'exemples tirés des économies d'Afrique sub-saharienne, on montre que ces projets méconnaissent certains mécanismes qui peuvent faire basculer dans l'état de pauvreté, et par conséquent les catégories réellement vulnérables. En particulier, les conceptions sous-jacentes aux actions d'aide demeurent dans un contexte de traduction monétaire et statique du revenu. Elles prennent peu en compte les environnements instables spécifiques à ces économies. Cet article examine les multiples réseaux qu'acquièrent les individus pour se couvrir, eu égard à ce que ceux-ci génèrent des coûts. Les situations de pauvreté sont issues de l'échec de ces processus, à côté d'autres situations structurelles dérivant de l'incapacité d'accéder au travail en raison d'aléas affectant les individus ou la configuration démographique de la parenté.