Urban poverty and social security: the Botswana perspective

The growing concentration of people in cities is now a phenomenon associated, almost exclusively, with developing countries. According to recent United Nations projections, the developing world's rural population will reach an upper limit in 2015 and, after that time, all future population growth will be concentrated in urban areas. Growth rates are expected to be fastest in Africa, where the urban population is anticipated to double between 1985 and the year 2000. This growth will result from natural increase of urban populations, rural-urban migration, and the expansion of villages into designated urban areas (UNDP, 1990). Major population movements to cities are also shifting the main burden of poverty to urban areas. It is a fact that urban economies cannot absorb all the rural poor and the persistent problem is that attempts to tackle urban poverty directly through the creation of jobs and the provision of public services unavailable in the rural areas simply attracts more of the rural poor and thus their migration cancels out many of the gains.

A workshop paper on the impact of social work programmes on urban poverty in Botswana.