Abstract
This thesis argues that poverty alleviation strategies and programs carried out by the
government and Non Governmental Organizations in Ghana provide affirmative
solutions to poverty. This is because, these intervention strategies have been influenced
by conventional discourses on poverty that fail to adequately address non-economic
issues of poverty such as powerlessness, marginalization and tmder-representation. The
study is carried out in a two-pronged manner; first, it analyses state policies and
strategies, particularly the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS), on poverty
alleviation and compares these to NGO programs, implemented with funds and support
from external donor organizations. Specifically, I focus on how NGOs and the
governnlent of Ghana negotiate autonomy and financial dependency with their funding
donor-partners and how these affect their policies and programs. Findings from this study
reveal that while external influences dominate poverty alleviation policies and strategies,
NGOs and the government of Ghana exercise varying degrees of agency in navigating
these issues. In particular, NGOs have been able to adapt their programs to the changing
needs of donor markets, and are also actively engaged in re-orienting poverty back to the
political domain through advocacy campaigns. Overall, rural communities in Ghana
depend on charitable NGOs for the provision of essential social services, while the
Ghanaian government depends on international donor assistance for its development
projects