The paper examines the effects of public financing in agricultural infrastructure on rural poverty alleviation in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) States. To conduct this macroeconomic analysis of poverty, a dynamic panel was used to study the effects of public spending on agricultural infrastructure on rural poverty and to understand the persistence of poverty. We used secondary data of a macroeconomic nature from World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) databases for the period 2000-2016. To correct the endogeneity generated by the dynamic nature of the panel, the estimation is made by the system generalized moment method (GMM). The results showed that the quality of road infrastructure contributes to increasing farm income and thus reducing rural poverty. On the other hand, irrigation does not have a significant effect on rural poverty. In view of these result, it is recommended that WAEMU States make efforts in the allocation of public resources in the area of agricultural infrastructure to boost the development of the agricultural sector and significantly reduce rural poverty.

Self- help groups are increasingly becoming platforms used by development organizations to induce behavioural change and especially to target women’s empowerment, but little is known about the effectiveness of such policies. This paper examines the contribution of Self- help groups to women’s empowerment in Burkina Faso, focusing on the case of the township of Gaoua through data collection from a reasoned choice sample of beneficiaries. The results show that membership of women in these groups enables them to increase their purchasing power, which in turn enables them to participate in the primary needs of their households and thus improve their empowerment. Therefore, it is suggested to the development actors intervening in the township of Gaoua to put together their efforts to cover all the villages of the Self- help groups in order to enable a large number of women to benefit from the spin-offs of these projects.

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