SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The chapter examines the experiences of the SSA region with the globalisatin-growth -poverty relationships in a comparative perspective. It argues that specific conditions prevailed internationally and domestically - coined as international and institutional traps - could explain the disappointing experiences of the SSA region in harnessing benefits of globalisation for the poor in the 1980s and 1990s. These conditions are interrelated through feed-back mechanisms detrimental to shared growth and poverty reduction by producing a loop of negative private-public interfaces for economic development. Thus, whether or not the recent encouraging sign of in income poverty in SSA can be sustained would depend upon the region’s commitments to creating a new institutional configuration by forging productive private-public interfaces with purpose of advancing the agenda of inclusive development. This should allow countries in SSA to integrate strategically into the global economy with a view of attenuating “inequalising forces” innate to globalisation.