One of the highest priorities of international development is to reduce~poverty. In recent years, the definition of poverty has evolved together with a better understanding of the nature of poverty itself and its underlying determinants.
In 1990, the World Bank’s World Development Report gave a key role to poverty reduction in development by integrating in its definition of poverty not only low income, but also ‘capabilities’, such as health, education and nutrition, and by stressing the interactions among these dimensions. This broadening of focus was echoed in the United Nations Development Programme (IJNDP) annual Human Development Reports, first published in 1990, which played a crucial role in refocusing attention on the different aspects of poverty and its distribution. Poverty and The Southern African Region; The existence of poverty in the context of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) will continue to have a bearing on issues of poverty as they impact at the level of a City such as Cape Town or a well resourced province such as The Province of the Western Cape. How these are articulated as overall trends in the context of an Integrated Poverty Reduction Strategy for the Province (IPRSP) will be important for the future. Poverty in the Western Cape and Neighbouring Provinces; Different processes have attempted to create the framework within which poverty exists in the province. Contextualization and synchronisation of the different strands of such a framework is urgently needed.
