'Capabilitizing' the Poverty Challenge: the Case of Mozambique

Abstract

The thesis deploys Amartya Sen's Capabilities Approach (CA) to evaluate multidimensional poverty in Mozambique. In conceptualising poverty as the absence of some basic capabilities, which is a minimum set of ¿real opportunities¿ people need to live the life they value, the main finding of the thesis is that the official Mozambican poverty headcount ratio of 54%, the estimation of the percentage of the population living in poverty used as the headline figure to direct legislative policy, is one that is set to low. A re-measurement of poverty using Alkire and Foster¿s ¿Counting Approach¿ reveals that 98.1% of Mozambicans have to be considered of being multidimensionally poor.

By applying an indicator-based approach to analyse ¿real opportunity deprivations¿ for Mozambicans, which finds that Mozambicans are heavily capabilities deprived in four key dimensions of value (in the economic, political, social and human domains), it becomes apparent that the country¿s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper is in its current market-driven neoliberal alignment not a suitable base to achieve the necessary capabilities expansion for pro-poor economic growth. Consequently, the thesis advocates altering the document towards the adoption of a multidimensional poverty measure, and towards the adoption of support-led strategies within a neo-Keynesian Pro-poor Macroeconomic (PPM) framework.