Nobel laureate Amartya Sen to address poverty in South Africa talk

from Earth Times

Johannesburg - Nobel Economics laureate Amartya Sen is to address issues of poverty, social justice, ethics and morality in the Nadime Gordimer lecture which he is set to deliver later Wednesday in Johannesburg. The Indian-born Harvard University professor was invited by Nobel-winning novelist Gordimer to deliver the lecture at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Gordimer described Sen as one of her "great heroes" at a meeting at her Johannesburg home Tuesday.

Sen won the Nobel Prize in 1998 for his contribution to development economics. His main focus, he says, is "how people can earn a decent income."

The importance of basic education and healthcare as the basis for prosperity is a key theme in the 73-year-old academic's work, which is often quoted by South African President Thabo Mbeki and Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, according to the Sunday Times newspaper.

Sen told the paper in a weekend interview he thought Manuel was doing an "excellent job."

South Africa had had its "ups and downs," he said, but the government's "analysis of the problem" of poverty could not be faulted.

The Nadine Gordimer lecture was founded in 2004 to honour the contribution of the 1991 Nobel literature prize winner and author of such novels as The Conservationist and July's People to South African intellectual life and letters.

The first lecture in 2004 was delivered by American author and activist Susan Sontag and the second in 2006 by Mexican literary historian and essayist Carlos Fuentes.