Lessons from the Experience of Some Urban Poverty-reduction Programmes

This paper discusses the experiences of a number of urban poverty-reduction programmes in Africa, Asia and Latin America and relates them to the livelihoods framework described in Chapter 1. These programmes highlight the importance for poverty reduction of changing the ‘policies, institutions and processes’ identified in Figure 1.1, both to improve the relationships between urban poor groups and government institutions, and to ensure responses from these government institutions that better serve poorer groups' needs and priorities. These programmes also demonstrate how tightly related the different components of the livelihoods framework are, and how challenging it can be to discuss any one of these outside the context of their mutually reinforcing relationships.