ASSESSING POVERTY REDUCTION INTERVENTIONS BY DISTRICT ASSEMBLIES IN GHANA: THE PERSPECTIVES OF BENEFICIARIES IN THE SAVELUGU-NANTON MUNICIPALITY

Abstract

Many studies have supported the view that, the District Assembly system as it exists in Ghana is a good channel for stimulating socio-economic development and poverty reduction. However, a systematic study of the strategies for poverty reduction in Ghana has revealed that district level poverty reduction strategies have generally had limited impact in addressing the problem of local level poverty. This gives rise to the question of whether district or national level poverty reduction strategies are most suited for implementation in the struggle to reduce poverty at the local level. Most of the empirical studies carried out so far on this subject have tended to focus more on regional and national level poverty reduction interventions, with very few of such studies focused on beneficiaries’ perspectives. Consequently, the real situation in the field remain unclear. Thus, the quest of this study is to fill this gap in the literature through assessing the effect of District Assemblies’ poverty reduction interventions on beneficiaries from their own perspectives. The study employed the sequential mixed method design, which allows the use of both qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques and procedures. Questionnaire, interviews and focus group discussion tools were used in collecting data. The methods of data analysis employed were both descriptive and inferential statistics. The descriptive statistics, such as tabulation, frequencies, and percentages, were used to measure the magnitude of occurrence of the variables being measured while the inferential statistics, such as Chi-square (X2), was used to determine whether there existed any significant difference between observed (i.e. existing phenomenon) and expected (theoretical) frequencies that are existing within the responses obtained from household responses. The qualitative data, on the other hand, were grouped under specific themes and sub-themes reflecting the study objectives, and subsequently interpreted. Cross analysis and triangulation were employed to compare findings from quantitative and qualitative analysis. A Municipal Assembly in Ghana, namely Savelugu-Nanton Municipal, was selected for the study. Three hundred and fifty-three (353) households were randomly sampled (made up of 89 LEAP and 264 non-LEAP households), thirty-two (32) opinion leaders and four (4) key informants were purposively sampled. In addition, two focus group meeting was organised with members of the Municipal Planning Coordinating Council (MPCU) and management of the Municipal Assembly (MA). The study found that: there were two broad categories of poverty reduction intervention (i.e. infrastructure and non-infrastructure interventions); the infrastructure interventions had a greater effect on poverty reduction than the non-infrastructure interventions; there was low beneficiaries involvement in planning interventions, as a result beneficiary influence on interventions was low; a number of implementation challenges emerged, but critical of those challenges was overreliance on external sources of funding interventions. Thus, the study concluded that, Savelugu-Nanton Municipal will only be effective at reducing levels of poverty among its target beneficiaries to the extent that it become financially self-reliant. This conclusion was partly attributed to SNMA’s overreliance on external sources for funding most of its interventions, which results in the MA subordinating its local development priorities for donor priorities.