The Unassuming Economist

From a new INCLUDE report:

“While most African countries have registered high economic growth, a large number of people remain excluded from the benefits of this progress. INCLUDE envisages that inclusive development aims to reduce poverty, both in income and non-income dimensions, and inequality, through improved redistribution on these dimensions. Inclusive development is increasingly recognized as a must, since inequality is rising and the evidence base of the detrimental effect of high levels of inequality on economic growth and social and political stability is increasing. INCLUDE identified six policy domains that are key to reduce poverty and inequality:

• Economic growth with structural transformation of the economy.
• Productive employment; i.e. more jobs with good working conditions, remuneration and stability.
• Social protection for resilience, poverty reduction and sustainable economic growth.
• The provision of basic services (education, health, finance, infrastructure, housing, water, etc.).
• Territorial development and spatial equity (e.g. between rural and urban areas).
• Quality and inclusive governance, especially for poor minorities and other marginalized groups.

These policy domains are clearly interlinked and it is important to identify and empower strategic actors for effective and inclusive design and implementation of policies. Working with strategic actors and investing in these policy domains is however not sufficient. To move beyond pro-poor and pro-growth approaches towards inclusive approaches with more inclusive outcomes requires the consideration of three key areas:

• Equality: besides absolute improvements, policymakers should consider the distributional consequences of their policy choices. Evaluation mechanisms should therefore recognize the added
  value of reducing inequality.
• Diversity: considering distributional consequences helps to understand the heterogeneity in access to an realization of development outcomes. To move beyond the mere recognition of heterogeneity towards inclusive action, policymakers are encouraged to develop integrated policies where interventions complement each other to not only create improvements on average, but to also decrease inequality, even if this creates an ‘extra mile needed to reach the more difficult to reach.
• Context: to move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions, policies need to be aligned with local or regional contexts. Policies that fail to integrate with horizontal and vertical policy frameworks, and fail to identify and include strategic actors, are likely to promote exclusion rather than inclusion. “