Agency and Economic Poverty Research in Africa

The most important force behind the process of continual change that characterises human reality is agency. An agent is not a passive recipient that is destined to be influenced by the dynamics of the world. He is the constitutive part of the world, the very dynamics that characterise it. Agency means a freedom to construct and create one’s own life. It stands for an independence in constructing of ones own reality. Attempts to monopolise this process are against agency. They stop the movements of invention. In the cours of the article the author tries to examine whether the economic poverty research allows for the development and preservation of Agency in Africa. Is such research adequate to describe the situation in Africa? Can it increase the agency of Africans? The article describes the history of poverty in Africa and discusses the issues of power relations that are the background of the economic poverty research. Its first conclusion is that the economic poverty studies undertaken by international organisations are only partially adequate for a proper description of poverty in Africa. This is because Africans only partially underwrite its basic presuppositions. Despite this fact there are many features of African poverty that are not taken into account within this research. Agency in Africa is therefore partially undermined by economic research.