Access to Productive Resources: The Catalyst to Rural Women’s Poverty Alleviation. A case of South Africa

Abstract

Access to productive resources is a critical medium to development. However, rural women in post-apartheid South Africa are experiencing hardships in laying hold of such resources. The pertinent questions the article seeks to interrogate are: who should determine the resource needs of rural women? Are the one size fit all programmes ideal for alleviating rural women’s poverty. This article critically evaluates data collected from secondary sources namely policy documents, journal articles, international reports and declarations. Firstly, the article outlines the meaning of poverty. This is followed by an overview of rural poverty in South Africa. Further, the article makes an assessment of some of the programmes that have been put in place by the post-apartheid South African government to alleviate rural poverty. The article concludes by recommending that there is need for policy makers to have closer collaboration and linkages with their communities in order to get direct information on what poverty means to them and what they need to get out of the catastrophic situation.
Key words: access, poverty alleviation, productive resources, rural women, South Africa