Poverty in Zanzibar

Poverty in Z

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Poverty in Zanzibar

In this section we look first at some of the facts about income and non income poverty in Zanzibar and then at how different people understand the problems and how they think that we can overcome them.

	Statistics on income and non-income poverty
	How to reduce poverty in Zanzibar
	Stakeholder involvement
	Vulnerability and safety nets
	The views of the main political parties

Statistics on Income and Non-income Poverty

The 1991 Household Budget Survey showed that the average annual income for each person in Zanzibar was $137. Well over half the households had an income of less than 15,000/- per month. This is a very low level of income.

Most of the statistics used in the ZPRP are very old. What do we do now considering that the situation has changed?

The amount of poverty varies from place to place. The 1991 Survey showed clear signs of moderate and some severe poverty in certain districts. Measures of monthly income per person showed that the worst off Districts were Unguja North B followed closely by Micheweni in Pemba. The best off Districts were Unguja West and Chake in Pemba followed closely by Zanzibar Town

Although most people own their own houses few own other valuable assets eg fields, livestock, motor vehicle, TV etc. This also varies from place to place

Government spending on social services has lagged behind spending in other sectors. This has helped to create some of the non-income poverty problems that are listed below

Education

	About 40% of Zanzibaris are illiterate and 60% of these are women. Pemba has a higher number of illiterates than Unguja.
	The number of children enrolling in primary school went up from about 50% in 1990 to 67% in 1997.
	The drop out rate from primary school is about 64%. The drop out rate is about the same for boys and girls up to standard 7 where more girls drop out.

Health

	Life expectancy is only 48 years
	Infant mortality rate is about 83 for every 1000 live births
	Under five mortality rate is about 114 for every 1000 live births.
	Maternal mortality rate is 377 for every 100,000 live births
	Malaria is the reason for 40% of all outpatient attendance and 28% of deaths amongst children below 15 years of age
	The number of reported cases of HIV/AIDS has gone up from 3 in 1983 to 1,903 in 1999. 85% of all cases are in people aged between 15 and 49.

Nutrition

There is a lot of malnutrition in Zanzibar. Problems include protein/energy malnutrition, and iodine and Vitamin A deficiency. The situation is generally worse in Pemba than in Unguja. Measurements of under five children show that 35% are stunted, 25% are underweight and 6% are wasted.

Water

Access to safe water is a major problem in Zanzibar especially in the rural areas where piped water and access to safe protected sources has not increased very much in the last ten years.

74% of people in Unguja town have direct piped water but this is true for only 1% of the people in the non-coral, rural areas of Pemba. Few people in Unguja town uses wells or springs as a source of water but this is how 92% of the people in the non-coral, rural areas of Pemba get their water.

Sanitation

Sanitation is very poor in both urban and rural areas. This is true for sewerage generally and is becoming an increasing problem for garbage and solid wastes.

Only about one fifth of the people in towns are connected to the sewerage system; the other people either use pit latrines or have no toilet (3% in Unguja town and 21% in Pemba town). In the rural areas of Unguja about half the people have pit latrines while in rural Pemba few people have a toilet.

How to reduce poverty in Zanzibar

When the ZPRP was being prepared many people gave their ideas about what poverty is and how it might be reduced. This section lists the ideas.

People felt that the causes of low income poverty included:

low productivity in agriculture, fishing and livestock

lack of jobs, and youth moving to the towns to find jobs

limited availability of

	resources and jobs especially for women and the youth
	land, especially for women
	credit
	markets
	infrastructure eg ( roads, energy, communications)

People felt that some possible ways of reducing income poverty might include:

	improving the machinery and methods in agriculture
	improving the employment and income possibilities of the wealth creation sectors and making sure that local communities can share in the wealth that is created
	creating more effective safety nets to help vulnerable people

People also gave some ideas about how to reduce non income poverty. These covered access to social services, survival and vulnerability, and social well being.

Running from problems does not solve them; we must face them and find solutions. (ZPRP-PTF)

Access to social services

People were concerned about access to education, health services and water supply. Women and youth were particularly concerned about access to education and women and the elderly were concerned about access to health. Women were also concerned about access to safe water.

Survival and vulnerability

People were concerned about nutrition and child health, especially in the more rural areas. Infants suffer from being weaned too early and some families do not provide their growing children with a balanced diet.

The amount of controllable disease is too high and the primary health care system is not effective. Poor medical records mean that we do not know as much about the amount of diseases as we could.

People felt that the poor state of protected water sources was a serious problem because it was a cause of many diseases, especially in the rural areas.

Social well being

People thought that their living conditions were not as good as it might be because of:

	corruption and bureaucracy
	lack of social and political harmony
	limited opportunities to participate in development efforts
	not enough attention being given to citizen's rights and responsibilities
	lack of good governance
	lack of political commitment to poverty reduction amongst the political leadership

Stakeholder Involvement

Stakeholders felt that it was important for them to be involved with poverty reduction. Farmers, artisans, traders, businessmen, entrepreneurs and public officials should create non party political organisations (including public/ private partnerships) that will allow them to work well together.

Many stakeholders were worried about good governance. Issues which they mentioned included:

	poor relationships between government officials and the public
	complicated decision making processes
	unclear division of responsibilities between central and local government
	weak local government because of staffing and money problems
	weak separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary
	the need for the government and private businesses to work together better

Many stakeholders thought that there was a need to train people in the government system to develop a more professional approach to staffing issues such as recruitment, training, posting and promotions. Lack of training at the moment means that money is not handled very well and officials are not serious about introducing ways of letting the public hold them to account for what they do. People in the legal system have particularly low morale because of poor salaries, and a shortage of court space, qualified staff, and modern office machinery.

Vulnerability and Safety Nets

There are many reasons for people being vulnerable. Droughts, floods and other unpredictable weather conditions can affect everybody. Disabled people are very vulnerable, especially the elderly. Divorce can also cause problems as can other old fashioned customs and traditions. We need to identify the different types of vulnerable people and to build safety nets to protect them from poverty.

Safety nets are traditionally provided by family and community networks and the government can support these by

	cash or income transfers, such as pensions, child allowances etc,
	transfers in kind, such as food subsidies, housing subsidies, energy subsidies, feeding programs, or
	they can provide income to vulnerable people in an emergency situation by providing jobs through a public works program.

The views of the main political parties

The main political parties have plans for addressing poverty. The CCM focuses on measures to directly reduce poverty while the CUF focuses on ways of improving how we use our resources and thus creating more wealth. Both parties feel that it is important to:

	tackle the problems of education, health, water, infrastructure and good governance
	support trade, tourism and agriculture as wealth creating areas
	emphasise water and electricity as priorities for government action
	make the work force more productive, especially in agriculture

Many politicians felt that the long drawn out political crisis in Zanzibar has led to a lack of political commitment and therefore to the shortage of good sectoral and poverty reduction policies. This has led to the increase of widespread poverty in the Isles.

All the above ideas have been pulled together to design the Zanzibar Poverty Reduction Plan (ZPRP). The main thrust of the plan is described in the next section.