Poverty Alleviation Efforts in Kenya: Combining the Top Down Approach and the Bottom Up Approach

ABSTRACT Poverty Alleviation Efforts in Kenya: Combining the Top Down Approach and the Bottom Up Approach Vanessa Nyaboke Onguti Director: Steven Bradley, PhD In the quest for poverty alleviation, there are typically two approaches undertaken: the bottom up and the top down. The bottom up model consists of grassroots efforts focused on programs in specific communities or individuals. This often takes the form of local social movements, small scale investment through micro-finance and savings and targeted problem solving such as deworming practices to see an increase in school attendance. On the other hand, the top down entails macro efforts that require scale to effect efforts for a country as a whole. Education reforms, better health care systems or limiting corruption via a checks and balances system are all means various governments utilize to decrease poverty levels in their respective countries. This thesis explores both approaches using Kenya as a case study for more careful analysis of a country's causes of poverty. I conclude that both approaches be applied in conjunction with each other to address poverty on both a national and local level as a quicker means of alleviating if not eradicating poverty.