Poverty Reduction Strategy Botswana Backyard Agriculture

Poverty alleviation in its basic form means a process involving strategies aimed at reducing thelevels of poverty in a given society. The whole world agrees that poverty alleviation should beone of the core fundamental objectives of any government or nation but few agree on the beststrategies to accomplish this task. A lot of strategies are tried tested and fall short due tounforeseen limitations. In my research I look at some of these strategies both from the view ofthe policy makers of these strategies and the view of the actual people on the ground that thesestrategies are supposed to affect both urban and rural. I look at why they don’t work and whysome work and what are the important elements that make them a success of failure. The thesis isdivided into5chapters. The first chapter is the introduction that sets the background of the studyand the poverty alleviation theoretical framework. It also gives the objectives of the studyincluding a summary and significance of these poverty alleviation strategies in Botswana. Thescope of the study is also outlined in the study which emphasizes the focus on the country ofBotswana. The second chapter is the literature review and gives definitions of poverty alleviationand also the definition of urban agriculture. It also stated the need for urban agriculture as themain strategy we focus on. It also give the different types of urban agriculture and takes usdeeper into the study as we pin point back yard gardening as the category of urban agriculturethat is most applicable in Botswana. It the proceeds to give the history, feasibility, limitations,benefits and economics behind urban agriculture. The study the touches a little on poverty inBotswana through data and statistics that show that even though Botswana may be a bit morefortunate than other African countries, it still has poverty that is prevalent especially in ruralareas. The third chapter which is methodology describes how data and was captured which wasqualitatively through interviews and detailed and intricate observations of the participantincluding their daily life and work schedules. The result and analysis are broken down intocategories that include not just the semantics of the back yard gardening itself but also of theireveryday interactions. These categories include land, growing technics, networks, marketing andthe satisfaction of what they do. A case study that is very similar to the one performed in thisthesis is also put after the methodology in order to benchmark and compare responses to see if problems hand limitations have evolved or if they are still the same in the community. The lastpart of this chapter also give core factors that need to be considered in poverty alleviationstrategies, these core factors, education, agriculture, infrastructure, government support andwater and production technologies. The fourth chapter analysis the feasibility of governmentpolicies and give the view of government form these policies including new ones that are in thepipeline. The fifth chapter gives general conclusions and recommendations for the policy reformsand how they can be improved. This is a huge issue and really cannot be solved by one study butat least this study touches on critical issues and gives simple solutions to the everyday normalpeople who suffer from poverty the most.