Empowering the poor

Since the late 1990s, strategies for tackling global poverty have begun to emphasize the importance of better governance, and the need to empower poor people to become their own advocates. The basic tools of poverty reduction are access to jobs, credit, education, and healthcare, as well as infrastructure like electricity, sanitation, roads, and irrigation. But delivery of these tools is inevitably affected by the efficiency and transparency of government institutions, and particularly by their accountability and accessibility to the poor (World Bank 2001:6