The politics of the targeting and expansion of pro-poor programs in Ghana

Zechariah Langnel and Desmond Tweneboah-Koduah

Development in Practice, 2024, vol. 34, issue 5, 597-610

Abstract: The paper examines how the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty program in Ghana is politicised and its implications for poverty reduction. Data from 26 in-depth interviews and 12 focus group discussions were analysed. The paper observes that a broad cross-party consensus exists because the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) program has been politicised by the two main political parties, namely the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party, who target the policy to their politically supportive districts and communities. The key pathway for the politicisation and subsequent expansion of the program is partisan manipulation of the District Level Implementation Committees (DLICs), partisan selection of beneficiaries, and party membership card as a requirement for inclusion. These political considerations tend to result in wrong targeting, where undeserving beneficiaries are included, thereby undermining sustained poverty reduction and inclusive development potential of the LEAP program.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09614524.2024.2344514 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cdipxx:v:34:y:2024:i:5:p:597-610

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cdip20

DOI: 10.1080/09614524.2024.2344514

Access Statistics for this article

Development in Practice is currently edited by Emily Finlay

More articles in Development in Practice from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().