By Geraldine Sibanda | 2025
Chidzero on Poverty Alleviation
Bernard Thomas Gibson Chidzero belonged to the first generation of African international economic thinkers who generated and defined international economic thinking within International Organisations (IOs) and on the African continent.[1] Chidzero passed on 8 August 2002 after having served in multiple IOs for 31 years (1960-1991 see Figure 2) where he was preoccupied with demanding fair trade and cooperation between North and South which he believed would result in poverty alleviation in the developing world. Despite having left IOs by 2000 when he was interviewed for the UN Intellectual History Project, foremost on Chidzero’s mind was still the issue of poverty in the developing world, particularly in Africa which “remains[ed] the poorest continent”.[2] He ended the interview on a hopeful note brought on by what he considered the changed economic thinking at the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs). He recalled how these institutions were formerly averse to accepting the nexus between economic and social development as exemplified by the structural adjustment programmes implemented, at their instigation, across the developing world between 1980 and 1997.[3] Chidzero recollected how this new thinking displayed by the BWIs was in sharp contrast to the thinking that prevailed during his time as Chairperson of the Joint Ministerial Committee of the Boards of Governors of the WB and IMF on the Transfer of Real Resources to Developing Countries (Development Committee), at the height of the of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) (For Chidzero’s thinking as Chairperson of the Development Committee See Box One).
As Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development in Zimbabwe, Chidzero also had to implement SAPs (1991-1995) which entailed, inter alia, a reduction of “overvalued” exchange rates, cutting of government subsidies, an increase of interest rates and a reduction of public sector deficits. However, he maintained that “adjustment programs must not be pursued at the expense of the poor who have no safety net in the form of savings, property or social security and unemployment benefits” (For context, See Box One - 4 April 1989 – Toward an Integrated Approach to Structural Adjustment, Debt and Growth).[4] In that interview, therefore, Chidzero welcomed the new thinking displayed by the BWIs since 2000s - “I always argued with my colleagues there [Development Committee] that we ought to pay more attention to social aspects of development. ‘Yes’, they would say, ‘but let’s have the money first so we can tackle poverty realistically’. I see that they have changed somewhat, that instead of ESAF (Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility), they now have PRGS (Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy), the IMF [International Monetary Fund] replacing ESAF with Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF)”.[5]
Box One: Quotable Quotes from Opening Statements of the Chairman of the Development Committee, Dr. Bernard Thomas Gibson Chidzero, 1986-1990:
16 March 1987 – Concerted Action for Sustainable Growth and Development: “The challenge is clear: achievement of sustained growth in the international economy is a collective responsibility of all of us – developing and developed countries alike-…Success in growth and development will continue to elude the developing countries if we do not achieve progress in international economic management”.[6]
28 September 1987 – Resources for Growth and Adjustment: “The Development Committee now has the opportunity to advance the internationally accepted understanding of interdependence and constructive partnership into concrete action…[including] proposals for action for low-income countries facing exceptional difficulties, especially the seriously indebted countries in sub-Saharan Africa”.[7]
15 April 1988 – Adequacy of Resources for Sustainable Growth and Development: “…the need for enlarging the transfer of real resources to sustain growth and development in the developing countries has become more pressing…Progress on resource transfers is necessarily linked to finding solutions to certain systemic problems in the world economy. The correction of the large imbalances on current account among major industrial countries would contribute most importantly to stimulating and enlarging international trade and capital flows. We need to pursue the question of the recycling of surpluses from the surplus industrial countries to the developing countries, as the strengthening of the demand for imports by indebted developing countries from deficit industrial countries would provide a sounder basis for the world economy and also contribute to the resolution of the debt crisis”.[8]
26 September 1988 – Critical Challenges in the Path to Development: “Our agenda focuses on the most critical problem of our day – the eradication of poverty. This is the heart of the development objective…Given the long history of development efforts…we need to ask ourselves why our success in reducing, if not eradicating, poverty has been so limited?”[9]
4 April 1989 – Toward an Integrated Approach to Structural Adjustment, Debt and Growth: “The main objective is growth and its sustainability, as well as social transformation. In this connection, it is disappointing to note the unsatisfactory growth performance of many countries undertaking adjustment programs, particularly in the Latin American and Sub-Saharan regions. Due to the short to medium term focus in adjustment programs in correcting the balance of payments situation, long-run development objectives to strengthen social and human infrastructure often have tended to be given lower priority”.[10] “Unlike project financing guided by technical criteria, adjustment programmes involve sensitive social, economic and political change in the adjusting country. Such change, if not manged sensitively, could have serious disruptive social and political effects. What is, therefore, required is a closer cooperative arrangement between the authorities in the adjusting countries and the institutions in the design and implementation of programs. Such programs should be fully responsive to country conditions and bear the wholehearted commitment of the adjusting country. This would improve the chances of effectiveness and sustainability. For while structural adjustment is an essential and necessary step toward development, this should not blur our vision of the country’s development strategy”.[11]
25 September 1989 - Concerted Action for Sustainable Growth and Development: “…We cannot escape the fact that the goal of growth and development continues to be elusive in most of the developing world, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Savings and Investment ratios are woefully low. The problem of international debt remains. The cost in human terms weighs heavily in levels of unemployment, access to education, health care and nutrition. And poverty, already at staggering levels, is still on the increase. We are only now coming to grips with the concept of sustainable development and the need for environmental concerns into account in development planning…. The problems of growth, debt and implementation of structural adjustment can only be effectively addressed in the framework of concerted action by the industrial and developing countries”. [12]
8 May 1990 – Toward A Closer Collaborative Approach to Meet the Challenge of the 1990s: “One of the most unsatisfactory developments in the 80s was the sharp declining trend of net flows to developing countries. The aggregate net flows to severely indebted low-income countries declined by a quarter, but it us the severely indebted middle-income countries which were hit the hardest. I am deeply concerned that, commencing in 1987, developing countries started to transfer resources instead of receiving them. This is an alarming, unprecedented reversal of transfers from the point of view of the Development Committee’s mandate”.[13]
24 September 1990 – Challenges and Strategies for Alleviation of Poverty in the 1990s: “reduction of poverty remains central to the mandate of the Development Committee since it is one of the ultimate goals of the transfer of resources to developing countries…Failure to make tangible progress on the poverty front will have far-reaching consequences not only in terms of human tragedy, but also in terms of the questions it will raise concerning the relevance of the international development institutions and the further erosion of public support in donor countries for development assistance programmes… The growing awareness about the consequences of the excessively slow process of poverty eradication calls for a fresh look at our growth and development policies. It also demands a heightened sense of urgency and dedication from all of us during the last decade of the century since no one can escape the negative consequences of these imperatives of global significance”.[14] |
Throughout most of his career, therefore, like most first generation international thinkers in Africa, such as Ghanaian Frederick Siegfried Arkhurst, Chidzero advocated for poverty reduction as an essential element to ensuring world peace. He opined that “poverty has all the elements of becoming the major cause of dissension, tension and conflict…”.[15] This kind of thinking was dominant within the United Nations (UN) system, informed by among other things, Article 55 of the UN Charter which obligated the UN to ensure “higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development”.[16] This thinking played a pivotal role in the creation of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA/ECA) in 1958 after Arkhurst and others, passionately argued for its creation at United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). It is at the UNECA where Bernard Chidzero had his first international assignment a mere two years after its formation.[17] Informed by such thinking, Chidzero, often spoke of the existence of a “two-track world, with a widening gap between the developed nations in the fast lane, and the least developed in the slow lane” a scenario he saw as “dangerous to international peace and security”.[18] He firmly believed that “in the final analysis the disparity in terms of standards of living, measured in income terms, is bound to lead to eruptions, little wars, civil wars or localized conflicts, and the industrialised countries will be brought in whether they like[d] it or not. [As] There is no security in a world of injustice…the comfort of the few cannot last if you have the majority becoming more and more poor”.[19]
While the influence of the UN, ECA and his international connections was no doubt visible in his stance towards poverty, his own background also fuelled his convictions on the pressing need to alleviate poverty in Africa and the developing world. Before Chidzero obtained his doctorate in Political Science at McGill University, Canada, following a Master of Arts in the same programme (cum laude) at Ottawa University and a Bachelor of Arts (with distinction) at the University of Lesotho; he was a boy who started school for the first time at the age of 12. Like most black people during the colonial period in Africa, Chidzero was not shielded from the poverty that came with farm servitude experienced by black people, in his case, at Arlington Estate in Southern Rhodesia, present day Zimbabwe, where he was born on 1 July 1927.[20] He went on to spend the bulk of his childhood at Edinburgh Estate where his father had moved to work as a “garden boy”, “house -worker”, “cook boy” and finally “store-keeper”.[21] He recalls these years thus, “So in 1939, when I was 12 I was sent to Chirimuta’s “school” at his village across Nyatsime and there I was joined by many other boys and girls and we learnt how to shape letters in the sand… There was no school building and there were no books nor blackboard at Chirimuta’s school. No matter, we learned without that…. Gradually we learned to combine other letters Baba [father], Amai [mother]…, all written on sand…The sand was good to us”.[22]
Economic and Social Consequences of Racial Discrimination
At the ECA where Chidzero found himself by chance in 1962 through his mentor Marjorie Perham “pressed Mekki [Abbas]…‘He has applied for a job at the UN. Why can’t you take him at ECA where you are?’ And that’s how the decision was taken, and I went to Ethiopia”, he also worked towards poverty alleviation this time through the lens of eradicating racial discrimination prevalent throughout colonial Africa.[23] With Surendra Patel as his first supervisor Chidzero’s first assignment at the ECA was to study the economic and social consequences of racial discrimination in six countries Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Mozambique and Northern and Southern Rhodesia.[24] The extensive study confirmed the undeniable “existence of laws, government policy and regulations…which create[d] artificial barriers on racial grounds and perpetrate[d] discriminatory practices which cut deep into the socio-economic fabric…[with] far reaching economic and social consequences”.[25] It also detailed racial discriminatory practices in land and agriculture, urbanisation, labour, education, and distribution of national income policies in all countries under review particularly in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. Such discrimination resulted in, among other issues, high production costs, waste of land and overpopulation, creation of dual economies, waste of administrative resources and large income disparities.[26]
Armed with the Chidzero Report, diplomats from Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria and the United Arab Republic (present day Egypt) sponsored an ECA Draft Resolution, to end racial discrimination in ECA member countries.[27] The Draft Resolution culminated in the passage of ECA Resolution 44 (IV) at the Commission’s 71st plenary meeting making widespread regulations aimed at racial equality in its member states.[28] Of note, Resolution 44 (IV) recommended that the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) “deprive the Republic of South Africa of membership of the ECA until it shall set a term to its policy of racial discrimination”.[29] Finally, the Resolution actualised a recommendation from the Report for further studies with a focus on specific economic areas including “human investment, internal markets and growth of domestic industries, government expenditure and social security measures”.[30] A Report of the Second study, therefore, was presented at the Commission’s Fifth Session in 1963 focusing on the racial nature of government expenditure in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. Like the first report, it concluded that racial discrimination was an impediment to economic development and “radical constitutional changes” were necessary to ensure that governments acted in response to “national interests in the cause of integrated economic development, upholding its raison d'être, the development and welfare of its individual citizens regardless of race, colour or creed”.[31]
Fair Trade
At UNCTAD Chidzero continued with his poverty alleviation drive this time via advocating fair trade between North and South. He was part of the negotiations of the Integrated Programme for Commodities and Common Fund in 1976. As Deputy Secretary General at UNCTAD in 1977 he was responsible for “commodity matters, technical assistance and economic cooperation among developing nations and the specific problems of the least developed countries”.[32] He recalls how he joined UNCTAD as an avenue to facilitate “the real need for predictable earnings and development”.[33] At the time he joined UNCTAD in 1968 as Commodities Director, thinking dominant at the organisation had been developed by Raúl Prebisch. He described the accepted thinking and its challenges; thus, “the dependence of developing countries on export commodities and on the problems of fluctuation of commodity prices and, therefore, fluctuations of export earnings, and therefore, unpredictability—you can’t plan. We had accepted that thesis. But there was a ring of government control in that philosophy—government must have a chance to influence movement of products and, therefore, prices and development”.[34] He experienced these challenges firsthand and lamented: “I went to UNCTAD, and we were talking about stabilizing the prices of commodities. You work out a program and within two years the problem had changed. And, in fact, you lost. You stabilized prices, but the market reacted differently. It moved to substitutes, or synthetic products, or research has improved that product so that you use less of it than you required previously”.[35]
Our Common Future
Given his pursuit of poverty alleviation in the developing world, it is no surprise that Chidzero agreed to be a member of the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development also known as the Brundtland Commission chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland. As chairperson, Mrs Brundtland recalled that, “I was very much aware of the need to put together a highly qualified and influential political and scientific team, to constitute a truly independent Commission. This was an essential part of a successful process. Together, we should span the globe, and pull together to formulate an interdisciplinary, integrated approach to global concerns and our common future. We needed broad participation and a clear majority of members from developing countries, to reflect world realities. We needed people with wide experience, and from all political fields, not only from environment or development and political disciplines, but from all areas of vital decision making that influence economic and social progress, nationally and internationally”.[36] Chidzero met the stringent criteria for membership set out by Mrs Brundtland.
The result of the Brundtland Commission aligned with Chidzero’s elusive drive for poverty alleviation and development in the global South, i.e., the pathbreaking reconceptualisation of the notion of development that deliberately showed the nexus between the environment, the economy, and poverty reduction. The Commission produced the Our Common Future Report in 1987 and with it the notion of sustainable development. It described sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.[37] Importantly, and more in-sync with Chidzero’s ideals, the report rightly argued that “sustainable development requires meeting the basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to fulfil their aspirations for a better life. A world in which poverty is endemic will always be prone to ecological and other catastrophes”.[38] Addressing the 20thWorld Conference of the Society for International Development in Amsterdam in 1991, Chidzero enunciated that “conservation of resources is related to the realities of development” which was essential for poverty reduction.[39]
“Fortiter In Re, Suaviter In Modo (Steadfast As To The Objective, Gentle As To The Means)”
Due to the nature of his career as an international thinker and his zeal to achieve equality, fair trade and poverty alleviation in the global South, Chidzero was a firm believer in negotiation and cooperation. Chidzero lived by the belief that “You must create a habit of cooperation, consider genuine interests on all sides, and reach informal understandings which can be transformed into binding agreements” hence his favourite Latin phrase Fortiter in re, Suaviter in modo.[40] The zeal for cooperation and negotiation was sown at the ECA where it was packaged as “concerted action” a phrase Chidzero used throughout his career as an international thinker.[41]
His beliefs in negotiation and cooperation were tested particularly as the Director of the Commodities Division at UNCTAD where his job demanded he promote “understanding and cooperation between producers and consumers”.[42] They were also tested as President of UNCTAD VII, which resulted in the historic Final Act of UNCTAD where he worked alongside Secretary General Kenneth KS Dadzie. The Final Act was signed at a time of great conflict between the North and South. His opening speech at the UNCTAD VII Conference acknowledged these divisions noting that “the situation is overwhelming. But this is the very raison d’etre of this Conference. Now is actually the time for vision and decisive action, events…must be shaped by the deliberate acts of statesmen, if I might turn Maynard Keynes the other way round, and not ‘by the hidden currents flowing continually beneath the surface of political history, of which no one can predict the outcome’”.[43] Chidzero’s diplomatic prowess was acknowledged by those present at the UNCTAD VII Conference including the Belgian delegate in his closing speech “…the whole conference Mr President, was under your responsibility, and thanks to your patience, your tact and your availability, the conference has been successful…I am actually feeling, Mr. President, that after so many years, a North-South dialogue has finally been reached”.[44]
Chidzero continued the spirit of cooperation and championing the rights of the global South at the BWIs as Chairperson of the Development Committee (See Box One). Throughout his Chairmanship he believed that cooperation between North and South should achieve effective debt strategies, favourable international trade, poverty reduction, private sector development and sustainable development. In his annual opening speeches throughout his tenure as Chairperson of the Committee, Chidzero emphasised the importance of “concerted action” in achieving the development objectives in the developing world including poverty reduction (See Box One above). His maiden speech in 1987 suitably titled Concerted Action for Sustainable Growth and Development, denounced the “piecemeal and uncoordinated approach to international economic policies” and called for “concerted international action if the goal of promoting sustainable growth and development is [was] to be attained”.[45] He reiterated in 1988 that “the attack on mass poverty, underlines the need for concerted international action”.[46] Even as he campaigned for the post of UN Secretary General in 1991, his clarion call was for cooperation between North and South.
Conclusion
Bernard Chidzero as a first-generation international economic thinker contributed immensely to economic thinking in the global South most notably his leading roles at the UNECA, UNCTAD, the Development Committee of the Bank and Fund and the Brundtland Commission. He belonged to the group of thinkers that believed economic and social policy were inextricably embedded therefore economic growth should be achieved in tandem with poverty alleviation. This kind of thinking evolved and made up a large part of the concept of sustainable development enunciated in the Our Common Future Report. For him such sustainable development could be achieved through the removal of racial biases in government policy, fair trade between North and South, and concerted action.
[1]Sabine Selchow and Glenda Sluga, "Development, International Organizations and International Economic Thinking: A Conceptual Contribution" in Nicholas Ferns and Angela Villani (eds), International Organizations and Global Development, (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2024): 23-42: 29.
[2]Columbia Centre for Oral History (CCOH), United Nations Intellectual History Project- Transcript of Interview of Bernard T. G. Chidzero by Thomas G. Weiss, Harare, 11 May 2000: 48.
[3] For more on SAPs in Africa see among many others, Thandika Mkandawire and Charles C. Soludo, Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment (CODESRIA, 1998).
[4] Southern African Research and Documentation Centre Archives (SARDC), Joint Ministerial Committee of the Boards of Governors of the Bank and the Fund on the Transfer of Real Resources to Developing Countries (Development Committee), Opening Statement by the Chairman of the Development Committee, 16 March 1987: 5. For more on SAPs in Zimbabwe see Alois Mlambo, The Economic Structural Adjustment Programme: The Case of Zimbabwe, 1990-1995 (University of Zimbabwe Publishers, 1997). Bernard Chidzero was Minister of Economic Planning in Zimbabwe (1980-1983) and then Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development at various intervals between 1983 and 1994. For more on Chidzero’s career as Minister see Geraldine Sibanda, Finance, Economic Planning and Power, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of the Free State, 2021.
[5] CCOH, United Nations Intellectual History Project- Transcript of Interview of Bernard T. G. Chidzero: 86-87.
[6] SARDC Archives, Opening Statement by the Chairman of the Development Committee, 10 April 1987.
[7] SARDC Archives, Opening Statement by the Chairman of the Development Committee, 28 September 1987: 4.
[8] SARDC Archives, Opening Statement by the Chairman of the Development Committee, 15 April 1988: 8.
[9] SARDC Archives, Opening Statement by the Chairman of the Development Committee, 26 September 1988: 2.
[10] SARDC Archives, Opening Statement by the Chairman of the Development Committee, 4 April 1989: 2.
[11] Ibid: 8.
[12] SARDC Archives, Opening Statement by the Chairman of the Development Committee, 25 September 1989: 1,8.
[13] SARDC Archives, Opening Statement by the Chairman of the Development Committee, 8 May 1990: 1-2.
[14] SARDC Archives, Opening Statement by the Chairman of the Development Committee, 24 September 1990:1, 9.
[15] SARDC, Bernard Chidzero UNSG Campaign Pack: Bernard T Chidzero – An Internationalist by Training, Experience and Aptitude, June 1991: 1.
[16] United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Knowledge Repository (UNECA KR), IDEP/ET/VII/71, United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning: Technical Assistance Report by David Carney, April 1964: 22.
[17] I discuss the debates influencing the formation of UNECA elsewhere. Geraldine Sibanda, “‘There Is No Dark Continent in The Modern Age of The United Nations’: The Making of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) And the Economic Ideas in Its Formative Years, 1949-1964”, forthcoming, 2025.
[18] SARDC, Chidzero UNSG Campaign Pack: 12.
[19] Ibid: 13.
[20]Bernard Chidzero Private Archives, The Migrant: Bernard Chidzero Memoir, (Unpublished): 4. For more on race, land and social issues in colonial Zimbabwe see Alois Mlambo, A History of Zimbabwe (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
[21] Bernard Chidzero Private Archives, The Migrant: Bernard Chidzero Memoir: 5-6, 15.
[22] Ibid: 11.
[23] CCOH, United Nations Intellectual History Project- Transcript of Interview of Bernard T. G. Chidzero: 26.
[24] Ibid: 30. Surendra Patel was a student of Simon Kuznets, first joined UNDESA in 1950 and did the first major World Economic Survey of the United Nations together with Sidney Dell and Dudley Seers both of whom were at UNECA. Patel was at the ECE then ECA in 1963 and ESCAP by the mid-1960s. CCOH, United Nations Intellectual History Project- Transcript of Interview of Surendra J. Patel interview by Richard Jolly, Ahmedabad, 18 November 1999: 6, 17.
[25] UNECA KR, E/CN.14/132, Economic and Social Consequences of Racial Discrimination Practices Report, 6 January 1962: 209-210
[26] Ibid: 210-213.
[27] UNECA KR, E/CN.14/L.114, 4th Session of the ECA - Economic and Social Consequences of Racial Discriminatory Practices – Joint Draft Resolution, 27 February 1962: 1-2.
[28] UNECA KR, E/CN.14/RES/44(IV), 4th Session of the ECA - Resolution 44 (IV) - Economic and Social Consequences of Racial Discriminatory Practices, 27 February 1962.
[29] Ibid: 2.
[30] Ibid.
[31]UNECA KR, E/CN.14/189, 5th Session of the ECA - Government Expenditure and Racial Discrimination, 24 January 1963: 86.
[32] SARDC, Chidzero UNSG Campaign Pack: 5.
[33] CCOH, United Nations Intellectual History Project- Transcript of Interview of Bernard T. G. Chidzero: 53.
[34] Ibid: 58-59.
[35] Ibid: 53.
[36] Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, 20 March 1987:9,https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5987our-common-future.pdf, accessed on 27 January 2025.
[37] Ibid: 41.
[38] Ibid: 16.
[39] SARDC, Chidzero UNSG Campaign Pack: 12.
[40] Ibid: 9.
[41] I discuss the conceptual underpinnings of the phrase “concerted action” at the ECA elsewhere. Geraldine Sibanda, “‘There Is No Dark Continent in The Modern Age of The United Nations’: The Making of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) And the Economic Ideas in Its Formative Years, 1949-1964”, forthcoming, 2025.
[42] Ibid: 5.
[43] SARDC, Chidzero UNSG Campaign Pack: 9.
[44] Ibid: 10.
[45] SARDC, Opening Statement by the Chairman of the Development Committee, 15 April 1988: 1.
[46] Ibid: 7.
Reference anything from this site as:
Sibanda, Geraldine (2025) 'International Economic Thinkers-Profile: Bernard Thomas Gibson Chidzero', ECOINT IET Profile #10, available at: https://www.ecoint.org/post/profile-of-bernard-thomas-gibson-chidzero