Understanding Socio-Economic Struggles: A Study of the Experience of the Poor in Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries

1. Introduction

Have most of the world's rulers ever really felt what the poor feel? Probably not, and if they have, it has only been on a small scale. In fact, a ruler who felt from the outset what a poor person feels would stop governing as many do, without the sensitivity and true love for the neighbourhood of the people who elected him.

This characteristic is very visible in developing countries, especially in countries where governments are very corrupt and the structure of the country itself is also disorganised. These countries are usually characterised by a high rate of disease, especially tropical diseases. These are usually the result of the lack of doctors needed for the population in general and for a particular region. For example, the number of doctors per inhabitant in developing countries is relatively low compared to the number of doctors per inhabitant in developed countries. This is due, on the one hand, to the fact that the health system in these countries is very efficient compared to that in developing countries and, on the other hand, to the fact that there is a greater capacity to train human capital, both doctors and nurses, for example.

The insensitivity of governments in poor or developing countries begins precisely with a lack of attention to the primary problems of populations and societies, the first and most important of which is a lack of sensitivity towards health: most people in developing countries die due to a lack of basic and primary public health care, which suggests that governments don't care about dealing with this type of problem.

The second lack of sensitivity has to do precisely with the levels of social attention to the population: in developing countries there is no significant social attention to the poorest, the item of social transfers in these countries has been significantly lower than the item of military spending, spending on personnel in the government hierarchy and spending on the purchase of luxury equipment for use by the rulers. So what governmental sensitivity is there to this kind of attitude on the part of governments? We are sure that what the poor feel is different from what the rulers feel, but the rulers should feel what the poor feel, the ruler should go 39 hours without eating to really feel how bad the lack of food is and how bad it is to have sky-high food prices, so they should also feel how bad the agrarian policy is that should guarantee a better distribution of food in an equitable and meaningful way to its inhabitants.

As we pass through the streets of one of Africa's most expensive cities, in sub-Saharan Africa, we come across a scenario that would be unlikely in developed or first world countries: people eat their meals in a rubbish bin, because... there is no social protection for the most vulnerable in society, so the poorest in society can't even eat their meals every day for a week, because they don't have the money to do so, or any other subsidy that effectively ensures this population's state of need.

Thus, the poor person feels what no one would like to feel: firstly, a poor person who eats their meals from the rubbish dump feels contempt for themselves, secondly, it shows the indignity of the society in which they live and, thirdly, a poor person who eats their meals from the rubbish dump wants to show the majority of people passing by that avenue that they are indignant at the standard of living that this individual has in that society.

Along with contempt, the poor feel insecure, both in terms of food insecurity and public insecurity, and who is supposed to guarantee them this security, because they don't have it? Many of the poor people analysed in this study nevertheless feel ignored by their decision-makers and policy-makers. In most cases, particularly in developing countries, the economic policies applied are exclusive in nature, i.e. in line with the extractive institutions analysed in (Daron & Acemoglou, 2013). Thus, according to the authors, extractive institutions work like "leeches" - they take from the poorest to give to the richest or to those who already have opportunities.

Thus, this study analyses how extractive institutions work and how extractive economic policies generally benefit only a minority of the population to the detriment of the majority of the population, giving rise to a vicious cycle, which is naturally a very common feature in developing countries and in the poor countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

With this study, we intend to plausibly show the great differences that exist between developing countries, poor countries and rich countries. However, we don't intend to make comparative patterns, only to show how economic policies aimed at these countries tend to become exclusive economic policies and are highly correlated with the extractive institutions that exist in these countries. On the other hand, in a significant way, this study will show what a poor person in a poor country feels and what a poor person in a rich country actually feels? Thus, these patterns of differentiation will allow us to understand how social assistance for the poorest works in the different regions and how governments channel budget allocations towards spending on social protection and social transfers in particular.

2. Why Does Poverty Exist?

If countries are able to produce goods and services on a large scale from scratch, export them to other countries and earn tax revenues from these exports, why can't they end poverty in their own countries? What are the driving forces behind poverty in the world? How do we effectively illustrate poverty? Between developing countries and poor countries.

(Brady, 2019) shows, for example, that there are three pillars that promote poverty: firstly, the behavioural approach; secondly, the structural approach, which is strongly supported by the behaviour of labour markets and the demographic context itself.

On the other hand (Sen, 2018) addresses the cause of poverty as being the deprivation of the main freedoms that the general population should have, these freedoms being related to economic opportunities, especially opportunities related to how to trade and opportunities to have significant improvements in public health and quality education. We would add, for example, a significant increase in food security.

The best way to illustrate poverty is through a concept related to social duality in a potentially rich country, abundant in natural resources and other minerals of great importance. The dual society, however, illustrates the contrast that exists in a single society, where part of the population is poor and part of the population is rich. This contrast can easily be seen in an area where there is an elite neighbourhood where the houses cost more than 170 million Kz and are mostly located in condominiums where the houses are of a high standard, on the other hand, in these musseques mostly live the poorest people possible, even those who live on less than a dollar a day. However, these are two different realities and there are big differences between the social classes. For example, in the musseques there are people from the lowest social classes, with zero purchasing power, who can't eat their meals during the day and who, for the most part, usually eat after 8pm. On the other side of the contrast, however, there is an upper class population with absolute purchasing power. This population can afford all kinds of goods and services, while the surrounding population faces major restrictions in accessing the goods and services they need, due, on the one hand, to the condition of poverty in which they live.

This contrast shows, on the one hand, how poor the countries are, so that, visibly, we have a society of the richest and another of the poorest, but this duality is significant in characterising the levels of poverty that exist. So why does this duality persist in developing countries? Why is there such a big difference between social class levels in developing countries? These questions can be easily answered using the extractive institutions approach (Daron & Acemouglou, 2013). As an example, in Democratic Congo, for many years the Congolese government favoured a large part of its political elite, which controlled both economic and political institutions. According to these authors, these institutions are characterised as extractive, because their main objective was to maintain economic power and political power as the different governments succeeded each other. Thus, democratic Congo had its heyday of extractive institutions, especially during the governments of Mobuto Sassekou, who ruled the country on the basis of an elite formed by himself, with most of the country's economy at the time being controlled by his close friends and family, who were responsible for the large food production, export and import companies that existed at the time.

As a result, a large part of the investments during Mobuto's rule were all made abroad, which ended up limiting the country and making it even more dependent on the international market, as the country lacked external competitiveness, let alone internal competitiveness. The economy depended exclusively on the extraction of important mineral resources, such as diamonds.

The Mobuto regime, however, gave birth to the failed state of Democratic Congo, which is of course a sleeping giant in southern Africa, but would Congo be a China in Africa or an India of Africa? Of course it would, if there were inclusive economic institutions accompanied by inclusive economic policies. Thus, the regimes that for years contributed to Democratic Congo's economic failure were also accompanied by considerable increases in the levels of political instability that the country has experienced over the decades, aligned above all with external interventions, both from some multilateral institutions and from some Western countries.

However, some authors, such as Jefrey Sach, argue that foreign aid is one of the drivers of poverty in Africa, since the extent to which governments receive foreign aid from international organisations and other multilateral institutions makes governments vicious and encourages corruption, and also makes governments comfortable, so that they are unable to draw up their own inclusive economic policies that will allow their nations to develop from the outset.

Extractive economic institutions also bring with them a set of corruption indices which, from the outset, both damage the institutions themselves and jeopardise the scope of applicability of the economic policies sought by the authorities. On the one hand, these institutions are in line with the extractive institutions that exist in the Democratic Congo, for example. There have been several regimes in Democratic Congo that have favoured extractive institutions and exclusive economic policies to the detriment of inclusive economic policies. As a result, there has been a significant increase in poverty and a significant increase in population growth, without effective control by the authorities. A state that is unable to control population growth levels from the outset tends to experience a continuous pattern of poverty, stimulated by exclusive economic policies.

However, this may not be enough to understand why poverty really exists in developing countries. Rather, we need to understand other issues that are very particular to each society, with greater relevance to developing societies like Congo, for example. Could these particularities really be related to the way in which, for example, governments usually define inclusive economic policies to eradicate poverty? Are the poor statistically recognised by local governments? Are there public institutions fighting poverty? Are there ministerial departments that take into account and are relevant to the fight against poverty?

In the literature on development economics, there are some details relating, for example, to the approach of demographic growth as the main driver of rising poverty rates in developing countries. A large proportion of developing countries, both in Africa and Latin America, have high demographic growth rates correlated with high poverty rates, so there are strong reasons to support uncontrolled growth as a source of multidimensional poverty in these countries.

In Africa, for example, most countries do not have policies to control the birth rate. Democratic Congo and Nigeria, for example, have the highest population growth rates on the continent, but these growth rates tend to follow a pattern of growth related to the country's poverty levels, in the particular case of Congo. If there were a set of inclusive economic policies, especially for the poor, countries should nevertheless be able to achieve prosperity, because with inclusive economic policies the authorities would know how to channel spending towards the social sectors with the greatest needs and the greatest possible relevance. Thus, governments fail when they apply economic policies, for example, to a reality unknown to the policy-makers and to a different target audience, what we call in this article exclusive economic policies, where the scope of application, both for the population and the localities targeted, does not usually converge. However, the poor are excluded from economic policies. For example, it is common in developing countries like Angola for economic policies aimed at housing not to converge on the poor, where the government decides to build expensive housing that can only be acquired by those who can afford it, mainly the upper middle class and the upper class, for example. Due to the cost of their construction by estate agents, the government tends to sell them at incalculable prices to the lower class population with zero purchasing power. An inclusive housing policy must, however, include a large part of the poor population, i.e. above all those who don't have the purchasing power to buy a home, and young people who are, for example, buying their first home and have a low or average income. So, in general, the poor feel excluded from the housing policies developed by their own governments.

Especially in developing societies, the poor have the highest rates of exclusion from government economic policies. On the other hand, these rates are in line with the extractive institutions that countries generally have, which, from the outset, leads to an increase in exclusive economic policies in developing countries.

As an example of the social duality analysed in the previous chapters, it is possible to observe this duality in other cities such as Kinshansa, for example, where the differences between social levels have been largely identical to those seen in the city of Luanda, for example. The number of inhabitants surviving on less than fifty cents a day is significantly higher than the differences seen in European cities, for example.

Thus, both the social duality seen in the city of Luanda and the differences in social levels between countries, as the example of Mobuto's Congo shows, contribute significantly to the creation of poverty, so it is plausible that exclusive economic policies and extractive institutions are the main generators of poverty in developing countries and that the governments' continued commitment to exclusive economic policies and haphazard governance contributes to strengthening these institutions.

The inefficiencies of public policies in poor countries plausibly and significantly help the growth of the poor in their countries, but they are strongly underpinned by the lack of economic opportunities for the poor, so the probability of a poor citizen in a poor country failing is 98 per cent, on the other hand, there is a 2 per cent probability of a poor citizen managing to prosper in poor countries, the reasons behind these theories have to do significantly with the fact that these countries can only provide opportunities to prosper to citizens who belong to a political elite that owns and controls both the politics and the economy of those countries.

On the other hand, a considerable number of developing countries have significant potential in rare natural resources and human resources (quantified in a large labour force available to be employed and a large intellectual force with technical capabilities for significant inventions that should initially promote technological growth in their countries).

Developing countries remain poor precisely because these countries do not have, for example, inclusive economic policies, i.e. the poor are not included in the governance programmes and development plans that these governments usually draw up; what has happened is that governments govern for an upper middle class population, thus, on the other hand, promoting a kind of governance discrimination, where minorities remain in multidimensional poverty without any real alternatives to prosperity.

The evidence shows, however, that there is a lack of inclusion of the issue of poverty in the governance structures of most developing countries, where there is a significant lack of ministerial departments that should be concerned with issues related to poverty, These countries, for the most part, end up being more dependent on multilateral institutions, especially with support from rich countries. On the other hand, this support tends to make the countries corrupt and the institutions vicious from the outset, because as the support is channelled, it tends to be applied less in the sectors to which the funds were actually earmarked.

So there is a big difference, for example, between poor countries that are used to implementing governance policies aimed at the poor from the outset. In the majority of developing countries, there are particularities that have to do precisely with the fact that the poor are fought against, i.e. in reality, the poor who struggle every day to get a daily income that allows them to survive, for example, are significantly discriminated against by the authorities through public policies that are distorted with the economic reality of their countries.

An example of this is Angola, where the authorities have implemented public policies to improve and organise trade in the city of Luanda, where a significant part of the population belongs to a social class with zero purchasing power and depends significantly on trade carried out via the informal economy, most of which is practised by zungueiras¹ . In fact, gender policies end up becoming discriminatory, because they fight the poor instead of including them.

In general, these are unfounded strategies that do not benefit the poor in any way from the outset, but which nevertheless represent a great deal of total exclusion, above all due to exclusive public policies that have mostly been policies that favour the political elite that has effective control of the country's politics and economy.

The examples of the Democratic Congo, in particular the city of Kinshansa and Luanda in Angola, plausibly show how poverty can be continuous, such that, through a set of exclusive economic policies, the population will always remain poor, where, for example, the likelihood of plausible growth aligned with the long-term development goals being achieved, it will be impossible to eradicate poverty. So how should governments fight poverty? Of course, much of the literature on human development and poverty studies, however, points to continued persistence in failed programmes and excessive dependence on Western organisations that can effectively help them eradicate poverty, because, firstly, poor governments cannot assume that they are poor in the first place and, secondly, because developing governments, instead of fighting poverty, often fight the poor through exclusive strategies and public policies.

Thus, the eradication of poverty does not depend on multilateral international institutions, most of which use aid to make governments complacent and comfortable, trapping them in complacency and ignorance.

The eradication of poverty will depend on how poor countries view poverty, how poor countries effectively assume that they are poor and how poor governments can design inclusive economic policies and make their institutions inclusive.

The poor will feel included in exclusive economic policies that generally favour one majority over the other. For example, in some African countries, such as Ghana, there are initiatives to include the poor in the long and short-term strategies that the government usually carries out. This is mainly done through the various micro-credit programmes aimed at boosting the agriculture of small and medium-sized agricultural cooperatives.

So poverty doesn't exist because countries have been colonised, poverty exists because the governments of poor and developing countries don't accept that these countries are poor, they turn their countries into true dual societies, where countless social inequalities reign between wage earners and non-wage earners. Secondly, poverty exists in poor and developing countries because governments don't usually include the poor in their governance plans. Thirdly, poverty exists because poor governments govern for a social class that already has everything it needs, to the detriment of the majority of the population who live on just 500Kz/day, equivalent to 0.60 U$d/day (in Purchasing Power Parity).

Poverty will exist because poor countries choose to implement exclusive economic policies aligned with extractive economic policies. For the most part, these institutions end up depriving the poor of economic opportunities, especially those related to trade, support for microcredit, support for the agricultural inputs needed to increase agricultural production.

(Banerjee & Duflo, 2007), show for example how the poor live, they analyse a group of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia, according to the authors they consider the poorest to be all those in households where per capita consumption is less than 1.08 U$d, per person per day, on the other hand the authors reinforce the approach with the merely poor being those who live on less than 2.16 dollars per day, the authors continue with the approach treating it from the timeline of 1 and 2 dollars. This scenario is usually significant in poor sub-Saharan African countries, thus reinforcing the idea that there is, for example, a lack of attention and non-inclusion of the poorest in economic policies. (Duflo, 2006) also shows how market failures affect the way the poor think from the outset, jeopardising, for example, their decisions about what to eat, what to wear or how they can benefit from different economic opportunities from the outset.

3. The Failures of Economic Policies to Eradicate Poverty in Developing and Poor Countries

As well as being characterised by high population growth, developing countries are also characterised by poorly functioning institutions. For example, in Mozambique, a large part of the population depends significantly on the agricultural sector, especially subsistence farming. In this country, however, there are inefficiencies related to the agricultural policies implemented by the authorities mainly to leverage the sector. The failure to eradicate poverty lies precisely in the authorities' inability to identify the regions where most of the country's poverty indicators are found. For example, rural areas end up being the regions with the highest poverty rates within a country, but empirical evidence shows that countries fail to identify these deficiencies from the outset; the core of poverty is in fact in these regions, where there is little productive capacity, for example linked to the way small farmers tend to practise agriculture. Major development plans do not generally include the poor who own small co-operatives, for example. In addition to not including the rural poor, developing countries also have a poor distribution of land, which has to do, for example, with the fact that these countries have not carried out a land reform that would allow for a fair distribution of land. The data also shows, for example, that there is a positive correlation in countries where land reform has been carried out, for example in some North African countries such as Algeria and Egypt, where land reform was carried out in 1952, and Ghana, for example, where land reform was carried out in 2003. In Mozambique, for example, there was an attempt at land reform, but it failed significantly due, on the one hand, to ongoing political interference that resulted in civil conflicts.

Thus, addressing the absence of a plausible agrarian reform and assistance centred essentially on small farmers shows us the weakness of agrarian policies aimed at the agricultural poor, who reside mainly and significantly in rural areas and survive on agricultural practices. The agricultural poor, however, represent the lowest class of poor in developing countries. The patterns of comparison between the two classes show that there is a big difference between a rural poor person and a poor person living, for example, in the musseques of a city's capital or in the musseques of another large city. In the first case, they represent the extreme of poverty, because a poor person living in the countryside does not have the opportunities for trade or other economic opportunities that can be found, for example, in a poor person living in the capital of a country or in another large city. The rural poor are significantly deprived of certain freedoms that condition them from the outset in terms of being able to trade and be included in the country's economic dynamics.

Countries fail from the outset when they don't include the rural poor in economic policies and a continuous failure in agricultural policies, which have generally been inefficient. But this is justified, on the one hand, by the fact that there are no efficient micro-credit programmes, for example, that allow the rural poor to leverage the agricultural sector, and on the other hand, by the fact that there are no plausible investments in agriculture and a set of incentives for eradicating poverty, in some countries, such as Angola, land reform has never been implemented, there are a large number of rural poor who survive on less than a dollar a day, and their main source of income is marketed agricultural products. The data also reveals that there is a great deal of wastage of agricultural production, on the one hand related to issues such as the lack of infrastructure and the absence of an efficient value chain that initially allows goods to be traded from the countryside to points in the city.

The rural poor are deprived of economic opportunities and are excluded from agricultural policies that could promote inclusive growth in the agricultural sector. On the contrary, they promote and increase social inequalities between the populations living in these areas, while at the same time increasing levels of inequality and significantly reducing rural incomes. There is also a lack of a set of supporting infrastructures that would allow the agricultural sector itself to grow, such as the lack of efficient electricity distribution in rural areas, the lack of media distribution, which initially conditions the growth of agricultural production and information levels.

(Lanças, 2011) suggests, for example, that poverty is associated with a decrease in behavioural control, with economic decisions significantly depleting cognitive control. (Banerjee, & Newman, 1998) emphasise the approach that market imperfections contribute significantly to the poverty trap. On the other hand, to better understand poverty, (Banerjee & Mookherjee, 2006) show, for example, a series of experiences, especially in developing countries, where the lack of access to fertilisers in Kenya is naturally one of the significant causes of poverty.

Would poor rural populations feel included if agricultural policies in developing countries, especially in agricultural areas, were actually effective? Governments, in addition to failing in sectoral economic policies aimed at the most vulnerable populations, the lack of information, for example, is a major structural flaw, while the lack of knowledge on the part of political decision-makers makes it impossible to draw up effective public policies for the agricultural sector. The poor in rural areas are not only deprived of economic opportunities, but their children don't even have the chance to attend a school where they can acquire a quality education. In many rural areas of Angola, there are no public schools for the first years of general education, because the public policies implemented by governments do not take into account the children of peasants; these are children who, from a social point of view, are excluded from having the same rights as any other child in the same country. Although these children grow up in the countryside, they don't have the necessary robustness that a child should have. Physical and mental disabilities mean that children grow up with problems that prevent them from having efficient and capable cognitive development, for example.

Economic policies generally fail because they usually don't take into account or include the rural poor. On the other hand, there is another flaw in public policies related to the lack of knowledge of the local reality, i.e. those who draw up economic policies draw them up on the basis of a reality that is unknown from the outset about the regions where these policies are to be implemented, and very distant from the rural reality, for example. This is related, for example, to the lack of institutions dedicated to rural development and the fight against rural poverty, so it is plausible that in relatively larger countries it is important and advisable to have an institution that directly coordinates multidimensional rural poverty. In some countries, such as Angola, for example, the ministerial departments for the economy, agriculture and finance make no mention of the fight against rural poverty, let alone rural development.

4. Living Below the Poverty Line

In sub-Saharan African countries, most of the poor live well below the poverty line. For example, in Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, in the neighbourhoods of the capital Niamey (Kaley Sud & Noveau Marché), of the more than 100,000 inhabitants who live there, the majority are poor people who survive on less than 50 cents a day, and most of the children in the region are illiterate and suffer from malnutrition. There is great potential for agriculture in Africa, but the countries are still trapped in an institutionalised ignorance that leaves them hostage to foreign policies, mostly dictated by a few Western countries, and there is also laziness on the part of the governments, Thus, the laziness approach makes governments hostage to themselves, because they can't get out of this zone in the first place, they put aside industrialisation and compromise the country's productive capacity, turning it into a country significantly dependent on the external sector, i.e. e., imports of foodstuffs that are largely of agricultural origin, i.e. imports of foodstuffs that they can't produce domestically, machinery and equipment and a whole range of technologies needed to boost their economies and local industry. Most African countries in sub-Saharan Africa have industrialised mainly on the basis of extracting resources to be processed abroad. In Angola, for example, the extractive industry contributes 23.9 per cent of national production. In Democratic Congo, for example, the growth rate of the extractive industrial sector is 25.9 per cent. On the other hand, this rate is plausibly higher than in countries like Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe, for example.

Why do millions of poor people in sub-Saharan African countries live below the poverty line? One of the reasons, however, is strongly related to the productive inefficiencies of these countries, making them eternal importers of goods for consumption, so on the one hand a large part of the population does not really have access to healthy food at relatively lower market prices, despite the fact that there is great potential in agriculture. Agricultural production capacity in sub-Saharan African countries is significantly insufficient and there is still family farming, with family farming naturally having the greatest production capacity. Niger, Sudan, Lesotho, Democratic Congo, Burindi, Sierra Leone and Congo Brazzavile are more dependent on imports of consumer goods. One of the reasons necessarily has to do with the inefficiencies of existing agricultural policies, the second has to do with institutional ignorance and the failure to utilise the revenues obtained from the extraction of natural resources, the third has to do with the persistent application of exclusive economic policies, and the fourth has to do with the failures of agricultural policies and the inefficiencies of economic and political institutions.

The various political failures associated with exclusive economic policies and extractive economic institutions increase the number of poor people in extreme poverty. On the other hand, in most of the countries mentioned above, the poor live below the poverty line and the feeling of exclusion of these individuals means that there are a considerable number of significantly poor people. For example, in one of the selected countries, the population eats meals every 48 hours, which means that if there is a meal, they can feed themselves. In peripheral areas, multidimensional poverty is deeply rooted, especially in countries like Democratic Congo.

Lack of knowledge of their rights puts populations with relatively low literacy levels at risk, for example, the poor don't know what social protection is and are significantly unaware of what social transfers are. If the poor knew that social transfers exist to guarantee and safeguard the needs of the most disadvantaged and people in extreme poverty, they would feel protected by their own rights and could demand more from politicians, especially during the implementation of public policies, and could ask for inclusion in economic policies that are exclusive from the outset. In African countries, ignorance of rights has a lot to do with the lack of an effective education system capable of transforming people and favouring the growth of an educated society.

The poor, who earn less than fifty cents a day, don't feel included in the societies to which they have elected politicians to represent them. For example, in most countries, these poor people no longer believe in the economic policies of their governments and feel self-rejection from the society in which they live. On the other hand, despair reigns, so the poor feel unprotected by the public policies they themselves elected, because they are mostly excluded from these economic policies.

The poor are terrified of the places where they live, the poor don't taste the nutrients in the different meals they eat during the day, the poor feel disrespected as human beings, there is no dignity in poor societies, dignity only exists for those who drive a top-of-the-range car bought with money stolen from public budgets, subtracted from the budget that would have been used for efficient urban waste management with the aim of eliminating tropical diseases and guaranteeing efficient public health and a continuous improvement in the quality of life of its inhabitants, or effectively applied to sectors that could initially allow for the eradication of hunger and poverty in general. The disregard for human life is fuelled by the failed economic policies of African governments and strongly supported by extractive public policies.

5. Conclusions

With this text, I have tried to show what the poor really feel. The analysis shows that the poor, in most of the countries we have had the opportunity to analyse, feel a sense of exclusion in the economic policies that the authorities normally implement. The analysis also highlights some reasons for the failure of economic policies, where we have identified two types of economic policy: the first has to do with exclusive economic policy. According to this approach, governments implement a set of policies that do not normally benefit the majority of the poor population from the outset, where the rural poor are non-existent in public policy accounts, so these policies, as we have analysed, are in line with extractive economic institutions and are strongly supported by extractive political institutions. The governments of developing countries fail because they do not take on board the fact that multidimensional poverty exists in their countries, due, on the one hand, to institutional ignorance and, on the other, to the lack of inclusive programmes capable of transforming the reality of the poor.

In the developing countries we have analysed, the authorities use certain strategies which, from a structural point of view, do not combat poverty; on the contrary, these strategies tend to significantly combat the poor. Some economic policies are discriminatory, i.e. they discriminate against the poor and give credit to the upper middle class, thus creating dual societies where the poor with zero purchasing power live below the poverty line, most often on just fifty cents a day.

On the other hand, the evidence shows that the countries remain poor not because they have been colonised by Western countries, but because there are no efficient and inclusive economic public policies, because the governments have not been able to guarantee the functioning of their institutions and because there are no efficient anti-poverty programmes, for example, in most of these countries there is an absence on the part of most ministerial departments of issues related to the eradication of hunger and also because the development plans do not take significant account of the inclusion of the rural population.

The lack of economic opportunities for the most vulnerable, however, promotes a significant increase in poverty. Thus, as long as there are naturally extractive policies and the non-inclusion of the disadvantaged in governance, these countries continue to live in a vicious cycle where alternatives are significantly dependent on support from multilateral institutions.