International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume V, Issue IX, September 2021|ISSN 2454-6186 www.rsisinternational.org Page 710 The Inextricable Nexus between Poverty and Politicians in Africa Dr. Ambrues Monboe Nebo Sr. (Doctor of Sociology D.Sc), Department of Political Science, University of Liberia Abstract: Researchers have documented multiple causes that explain the reasons for the persistence of extreme poverty in Africa, despite existence of comprehensive policy frameworks (Poverty Reduction Strategy). These causes are: corruption and poor governance, limited employment opportunities, poor infrastructure, poor resource usage, wars and unending conflicts, poor World Bank and IMF policies, among others. While sustaining these genuine causes, this paper probably the first of its kind look at different reason that explains the persistence of extreme poverty in Africa. It looks at the inextricable nexus between poverty and politicians as another reason for extreme poverty, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This article argues that the existence of extreme poverty is strategic to the political agenda and promotion of politicians. In other words, this paper makes the case that extreme poverty protects and enhances the selfish interests of politicians. And because poverty serves the personal interest of politicians, the urge and inclination to substantially reduce poverty have remained a mere lip political rhetoric in Africa. Precisely, the paper advances the argument that vote buying is the interest that explains the nexus between the former and the latter in Africa. To solve this old aged problem, this article recommend that civil society must rollout their sleeves to robustly engage electorates through the concept of sustain civic education for holding politicians accountable for their failures or pretense of reducing extreme poverty substantially. Key Words: Poverty, Politician, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Vote buying, I. INTRODUCTION ver the past two decades, Politicians in Africa as fulfillment of campaign manifestos or promises have introduced a good number of comprehensive policy frameworks intended to tackle or reduce the prevalence of extreme poverty. This ambitious framework is called poverty reduction strategies. For example, in 1997, Uganda‟s government launched its Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) with subsequent revisions in 2000 and 2005 (Canagarajah, A van Diesen, 2006) In 2009, Liberia‟s government launched its poverty reduction strategy (VOA, 2009). The Kenyan government committed itself to poverty alleviation by 2015 through the adoption of the National Poverty Eradication Plan (Nyamboga, Nyamweya, Sisia, & George, 2014). In 2002, Malawi officially introduced its poverty strategy paper. Similarly, Nigeria inaugurated couple of strategies namely: Poverty Alleviation Programme Development Committee in 1994, National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy between 1997-2007, President Yar‟adua between 2007-2010 launched a 7-point agenda for food security and poverty eradication and President Goodluck Jonathan between 2010- 2015 launched the transformation agenda; a five year development plan focused on non-inflationary growth, employment generation and poverty alleviation (Jakonda & Alexander, 2015). Finally, in 2016 Zimbabwe launched the Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (Mtomba, 2016) Despite these tremendous progress that clearly speaks volumes of politicians‟ intention to reduce poverty as they claimed, about three in five of the world‟s poor are now living in Africa (Christiansen & Hill, 2019, 34) Approximately 40 percent of the Saharan Africa (SSA), population still lived in extreme poverty in 2018 (World Bank, 2020, 13). SSA also has the highest rate of multidimensional poverty, with 58 percent of the population considered to be multidimensionally poor (Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative, 2018, 39; Tewolde & Weldeyohannes, 2018, 474). Of course, researchers have documented multiple causes that explain the reasons for the persistence of poverty in Africa. Unfortunately, this paper is not about these documented reasons that are genuine. It looks at another different reason that could also be genuine. It does so by interrogating the inextricable nexus between poverty and politicians in Africa. In other words, this paper meticulously proffers the argument that the main reason why Africa despite all of the inauguration of poverty reduction strategies cannot substantially reduce poverty is simply because it is strategic to the selfish interest of politicians. Structurally, this paper is divided into two segments. The first segment begins with a conceptual clarification of politician and discussion on how poverty can be defined and measured, and quantification of its prevalence in Africa. And finally, the second segment explains the inextricable nexus between poverty and politicians, and then concludes the paper. II. CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION OF POLITICIANS Gaines, Miller, Larry, and Roger LeRoy (2012) narrowly conceptualized politicians as elected representatives. From political science perspective, elected representatives are members of parliament, legislature, national assembly that represent the interest of their constituents that elected them. Politician is also defined as a person holding or seeking an elected seat in government. An elected seat in government O