Search

Poverty reduction strategy papers represent both a primary policy device of international development institutions, and an instance of a wider international convergence of public policy around global integration and social inclusion. Charting the emergence of these approaches, this paper argues that this convergence has a number of structural predilections which favor the technical and juridical over the political economic, and a disciplinary framework over a practical contest. Drawing extensively on decentralized governance and poverty reduction programs in Uganda, this paper shows how these predilections obscure power relations and restrict practical and political options, while exacting heavy establishment and compliance costs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Introduces new data on rebel group formation in African states (1997–2015). • Indicates that most rebel groups formed in rural areas and did not emerge from local protests. • Demonstrates the need for more theory on the pathways to internal armed conflict. • Demonstrates the need for – and challenges of collecting – systematic evidence on armed group formation. Theories of internal armed conflict onset often conceptualize an eruption emerging from pre-existing, non-violent opposition movements or organizations. This paper argues that this is not the most common pathway to armed conflict in Africa. It introduces new data on rebel group formation in 47 African states (1997–2015) that offers a more complete picture than existing conflict datasets; about two-thirds of the groups in the new dataset are not named in standard conflict datasets. The strong majority of these rebel groups formed in rural areas; did not emerge from nearby protest movements or civil society organizations; and initially did not benefit from substantial material resources nor commit large-scale violence. Analyses suggest that rebel groups forming in rural parts of African states draw less often on pre-war, public, non-violent contestation than those of urban areas. The paper highlights the need for more theory on the varied pathways to internal armed conflict, and the importance of – and challenges of collecting – systematic evidence on armed group formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Provides a comparative overview of three approaches to resilience measurement and the complementary insights they offer. • Living in the flood plain and gender of the household head shift resilience when measured as shock persistence. • Using a moments-based approach, household food insecurity is path-dependent and lower when living in the flood-plain. • Algorithms can identify the best predictors of food insecurity as a proxy for resilience, such as distance to drinking water. • Outlines a methodological approach for collecting monthly 'high-frequency' household data centered on resilience. Resilience as a metric is of growing interest to development researchers and practitioners, particularly for those whose work concerns the effects of climate change, conflict and epidemics. The growing need for resilience measurements motivates this research, measurements that reflect the complex, dynamic features of welfare among populations living in shock-prone contexts. It presents insights from three measurement approaches to explore the dynamic, intra-annual effects of shocks on household well-being, mediated by household characteristics; one based on shock persistence, one based on the stochastic distribution of well-being, and one driven by machine learning algorithms and based on predictive power. The insights gained from the comparison of measurement approaches offer a fuller understanding of the factors driving resilience than any single approach on its own. The paper harnesses a novel data-set from the 'Measuring Indicators for Resilience Analysis' project, which, each month, tracks shocks and food security indicators for one year in a highly food insecure population in Malawi. Across approaches, our study consistently finds that shocks and food insecurity are very persistent, and that households living in the flood plains are more resilient. When focusing on specific shocks such as illness, the gender of the household head matters as-well. A broader search for predictors of food insecurity using LASSO and Random Forest algorithms uncovers other characteristics that affect resilience, such as the distance to drinking-water. The paper demonstrates how multiple complementary approaches can identify different but overlapping factors related to resilience, painting a fuller, richer picture. It also demonstrates the empirical benefits derived from using high-frequency data sets in the study of resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A standard model of electricity sector reform has been prescribed in Africa. • Timing of reform is due to country need for external financing to improve efficiency. • Pace of reform is due to country autonomy from donors, particularly the World Bank. • Extent of reforms implemented is due to internal autonomy from domestic pressures. • African countries exercise agency, autonomy, and resistance to mediate global norms. Electricity access in sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest amongst all regions of the world. In response, since the 1990s, the World Bank and other donors have pushed African countries to reform their electricity sectors. While a "standard model" of liberalization reforms has been endorsed, the timing, pace and extent of reform adoption and implementation undertaken by countries varies significantly. This paper asks: why do some countries adopt electricity sector reforms more quickly and more fully than others? The paper uses a comparative historical analysis of Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda to answer this question. Each country's experience with reform varies. Our study finds that the timing of reform was largely contingent on economic factors, primarily the need for financing to improve sector efficiency. The pace of reform was shaped largely by international political considerations, namely differences in the countries' reliance on aid from key donors, especially the World Bank. And the extent of reform was determined primarily by internal national political factors. Specifically, where elite decision-makers faced a historically-grounded national ideology that created citizen expectations that the state provide electricity, a competitive democratic regime, and stronger civil society, electricity sector reforms were less extensive. The paper makes an important contribution to understanding the politics of institutional change. We show how African governments exercise autonomy and resistance, both internationally with donors, and domestically, in the rewriting of institutional rules; that reforms are contingent on political calculations by national political elites about domestic conditions and needs; and that global norms are not sufficient to cause policy change. Overcoming energy poverty in Africa is expected to remain a challenge for the foreseeable future. As new development partners replace or complement the World Bank's role in African energy sectors, attention to how domestic institutions and politics engage with global norms is critical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the rules that are often chosen to frame decentralization in Ghana. It perceives the challenges of multi-level governance in postcolonial sub-Saharan African countries, such as weak local government capacity for urban planning, as effects of ill-conceived constitutional rules. The paper draws ideas from constitutional political economy (CPE) to problematize the constitutional rules underlying Ghana’s current state of decentralization. I argue that these constitutional rules, embodied in Ghana’s 1992 Constitution and Local Government Act (462), evince both continued dominance of state control over local governance and a systemic transfer of the logics and instruments of the authoritarian Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) military regime to the choice of constitutional rules for Ghana’s decentralization. In other words, Ghana’s decentralization patterns and processes must be examined in the context of the constitutional regime from which they were born. One such pattern is the creation of new local governments (a gerrymandering strategy) by successive governments without commensurate improvement in local democratic and pro-poor developmental outcomes. The paper’s discussions, largely conceptual but interlaced with empirical moments, serve to stimulate debate about the relationships between the constitutional rules for decentralization and their socioeconomic and political effects. I conclude by reflecting on the conceptual and methodological challenges of using CPE to analyze constitutional rules for decentralization and offer ideas to address these challenges in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City governments in sub-Saharan Africa have historically been beholden to national governments. Lack of national urban policies and tensions between national and city governments are common. Yet, for decades, research has identified small-scale innovations at the urban scale. Rarely, however, are policy innovations in African cities so influential as to lead national governments to scale up city based actions. This is particularly true in sectors that have been the dominant purview of central governments. This paper examines how citizens, civil society organizations, city governments and national bureaucrats in two cities of East Africa – Kampala and Nairobi – have interacted to produce policy innovation in agriculture. Agriculture has always been a sector of high national importance in Africa, but increasingly cities are becoming focal points for agricultural policy change. The two cities compared in the paper are unusual in having a collection of interests who have been advocating for improved support and recognition of urban food production. Indeed, these cities are rare for having continually promoted the formalization of urban agriculture in local and national policy. While advocacy for urban agriculture is common globally, what is not clear is under what conditions local advocacy produces policy uptake and change. What are the conditions when city-based advocacy deepens the institutionalization of policy support locally and nationally? Drawing from theory and research on policy change and African urban politics and governance, and qualitative data collection in each country, this paper argues that while external, international assistance has helped initiate policy dialogue, domestic civil society organizations and their engagement with local and national bureaucrats are key to policy support at the local and national scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Over the period 1990–2009, Africa has experienced a distinct and favorable reversal in its growth fortunes in stark contrast to its performance in the preceding decades, leading to a variety of hypotheses seeking to explain the phenomenon. This paper presents both cross-country and panel-data evidence on the causal factors driving the recent turnaround in Africa’s growth and takes the unique approach of disaggregating the separate growth impacts of Africa’s bilateral trade with: China, Europe, and America. The empirical analysis presented in this paper suggests that the primary and most robust causal factors driving Africa’s recent growth turnaround are private sector and foreign direct investment. Although empirical evidence of the role of bilateral trade openness in Africa’s recent growth emerges within a fixed effect estimation setting, these results are not as robust when endogeneity and other issues are fully accounted for. Among the three major bilateral partners, Africa’s bilateral trade with China has been a relatively important factor spurring growth on the continent and especially so in resource-rich, oil-producing, and non-landlocked countries. The econometric results are not as supportive of growth-inducing effects of foreign aid. These findings emerge after applying a variety of panel data specifications to the data, including the recent fixed effects filtered (FEF) estimator introduced by Pesaran and Zhou (2014) and the dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator, which allows for endogeneity between trade and growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding bureaucratic corruption in access to public services and exit mechanisms particularly for the poor remains a core question in the economics of corruption literature. This paper examines the role of social networks in easing bureaucratic corruption in the demand for public services, using a bivariate ordered probit model and the sixth wave of the Afrobarometer survey from 36 African countries between 2014–2015. The main results suggest that not all citizens are victims of corrupt public officials, as social networks serve as substitutes or potential exit options out of corruption. However, individuals who face multiple deprivations lack access to public services as they are not able to use their social networks to ease access. Individuals who do not face difficulties in accessing public services employ social networks as complements to their corrupt acts to "get ahead". We discuss these findings in line with poverty eradication strategies and anti-corruption policies in Africa. • Corruption hinders public service access in Africa but not all citizens are victims. • Officials are likely to be more corrupt than citizens in demanding public services. • Corruption eases the poor's access to public services in Africa • Civic networks serve as an exit option from corruption, and a way to "get ahead". • Poverty eradication and anti-corruption are key for service access for the deprived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the driving factors of manufacturing development in Africa. Using the system-GMM technique with four-year average panel data over the period 1995–2014, including 53 African countries, the paper finds four main results. (1) There is a U-shaped relationship between the manufacturing share of GDP and per capita GDP. (2) Exchange rate depreciation stimulates Africa’s manufacturing sector. (3) Good governance, especially a low level of corruption and better government effectiveness contribute to Africa’s manufacturing development. (4) The size of domestic market positively affects the manufacturing share of GDP. On the other hand, the paper finds no significant effects of FDI and urbanization on manufacturing development. The implication of these findings is that improving the level of competitiveness, expanding the size of domestic market, combating corruption as well as improving government effectiveness are key for Africa’s manufacturing sector development. Moreover, the U-shaped relationship between the manufacturing share of GDP and per capita GDP, implies that African countries should not expect industrialization to automatically happen with income increase, but rather, they should proactively tackle key obstacles to the development of the manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The take-up of the social pension in Kenya has varied across diverse sub-national contexts. • This paper finds that the registration of remote and marginalized populations in Marsabit County was negatively impacted by two factors. • Weak state infrastructural power and the political timing of the social pension registration limited the program's reach. • The quasi-universal social pension has increased coverage and reduced the burdens of targeting. • However, complementary investments in state capacity are required to ensure social assistance access for marginalized populations. In 2017 the government of Kenya transformed its poverty-targeted older persons cash transfer into a '70-plus' social pension. While the literature suggests that a switch from targeted to universal programs would simplify registration and reduce inclusion and exclusion errors, there were significant variations in take-up of the social pension across diverse counties in Kenya, with lower take-up in counties with higher rates of poverty. Drawing on qualitative data collected across six months in 2018, including interviews and focus group discussions with government officials, community leaders, politicians and ordinary citizens, this paper examines why take-up of the social pension has been lower in Marsabit County, an area of the country with high levels of poverty. We find that government officials struggled to register eligible beneficiaries in remote and marginalized communities within the mass registration exercise's tight timelines. As a result, they often relied on local actors to relay information between the state and local communities, which resulted in uneven registration and the exclusion of some marginalized populations, particularly in remote and conflicted affected areas. We argue that pressure from the national government to register potential beneficiaries in the month prior to the highly contested 2017 national election exacerbated the challenges posed by low state infrastructural power, including limited resources, low state oversight and a lack of embeddedness within local communities. The visible expansion of the social pension prior to the election was prioritized over achieving universal registration. This paper contributes to the literature on universal versus targeted approaches to social assistance and furthers our knowledge of the challenges of reaching the poorest of the poor even through nominally 'universal' programs. While universal approaches expand access to social assistance, this paper highlights the importance of ongoing registration and investments in state infrastructural power to ensure that remote and marginalized populations can access social assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Can the political science literature on sons-of-the-soil (SoS) conflict and civil war explain patterns of ethnic conflict over land in sub-Saharan Africa? Sons-of-the-soil terminology, developed with reference to conflicts in South Asia, has been used to describe some of Africa’s most violent or enduring conflicts, including those in eastern DRC, northern Uganda, the Casamance Region of Senegal, and southwestern Côte d'Ivoire. Is Africa becoming more like South Asia, where land scarcity has often fueled conflicts between indigenous land owners and in-migrants? This paper argues that political science theories that focus on rural migration and land scarcity alone to explain outbreaks of SoS conflict in Asia fall short in Africa because they are underdetermining. The paper proposes a model of structure and variation in land tenure institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, and argues that these factors are critical in explaining the presence of absence of SoS conflict over land. This conceptualization of the problem highlights the strong role of the state in structuring relations of land use and access, and suggests that the character of local state-backed land institutions goes far in accounting for the presence or absence, scale, location, and triggering of large-scale SoS land conflict in zones of smallholder agriculture. A meta-study of 24 subnational cases of land conflict (1990–2014), drawn from secondary and primary sources and field observations, generates case-based support for the argument. The study suggests that omission of land-tenure institution variables enfeebles earlier political science theory, and may inadvertently lead policy makers and practitioners to the erroneous conclusion that in rural Africa, primordial groups compete for land in an anarchic state of nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• In the post-financial crisis era, fiscal challenges have led countries adopt a more market-based means of development finance. • The state is not a sheer subsidizer distorting market in favor of policy objectives, but a risk-sharing, profit-seeking equity investor. • China's investment fund offers not only equity shares but also state-related resources to assist private firms' business expansion in Africa. • Stateness has prevented the investment fund from choosing the most financially promising projects or withdrawing from the failing ones. The post-2008 financial crisis era has witnessed a significant change in the global development landscape. Fiscal challenges have led countries that historically provided state-led, gift-like development assistance to adopt a more market-based means of development finance driven by self-interest. This allows us to reconsider the roles of the state and the market in development by focusing on the China-Africa Development Fund (CADFund), China's first official development-oriented investment fund and a subsidiary of the China Development Bank, the world's largest national development bank. This paper draws from interviews and participant observations involving CADFund, its partners, and project companies in Africa to examine how China's official finance mobilizes private investment to facilitate global development. The findings indicate that the state-led equity fund has catalyzed the start-up and expansion of Chinese overseas private enterprises by providing otherwise inaccessible equity support and channeling additional state-related resources to empower long-term business development. Meanwhile, stateness has created an adverse selection problem, preventing CADFund from choosing the most financially promising projects or withdrawing from the failing ones. The paper sheds light on the potential challenges facing development finance institutions in employing equity investment as a tool for reconciling long-term development objectives and short-term commercial objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper examines the role that multinational enterprises (MNEs) and foreign direct investments (FDI) can have in enhancing the access to electricity for local communities in developing countries based on the quality of home and host institutions. Access to electricity is a marker for development but it is far from being universal in developing countries. The shortage of electricity is mainly the consequence of inability of governments in planning, financing, and developing necessary electricity infrastructure. In this context, investments from other actors can be essential. Particularly, we focus on the role of FDI and MNEs. We claim that when MNEs invest in developing countries, they are incentivized to solve the lack of electricity infrastructure mainly for two reasons: to guarantee their business activities and to gain legitimacy with their local stakeholders. In addition, we argue that MNEs and FDI from institutionally underdeveloped countries will be more prone to develop infrastructure for the provision of electricity to local population, as generally they suffer from a negative stereotype. For this study, we rely on 1,547 observations composed of pairs of 83 home countries and 15 host countries in sub-Saharan Africa, observed from 2005 to 2011. Due to the nature of the database, we adopt panel data techniques, i.e., system-GMM and corrected Least Square Dummy Variable estimators. We find that FDI promotes access to electricity in developing countries with weak institutions and this is more likely true when FDI come from institutionally underdeveloped countries. These results are far from obvious, as they controvert common idea among institutional scholars that a regulatory authority is essential in the provision of infrastructure. In conclusion, with this paper we partially rehabilitate the image of MNEs investing in developing countries, by demonstrating that—under certain conditions—they could contribute to energy poverty alleviation of local population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• REDD+ projects are associated with an increase in forest carbon. • Forests recovered due to improved governance, community engagement, land use planning and capacity building. • REDD+ projects neither improved nor harmed livelihoods. • When designed appropriately, REDD+ has the potential to simultaneously improve welfare and reduce carbon emissions. This paper investigates the impacts of REDD+ in two pilot sites in the districts of Kilosa and Kondoa in Tanzania. We pose two questions: First: What are the impacts of REDD+ on social welfare? and second: What are the impacts of REDD+ on forest carbon storage? The study employs the Before-After/Control-Intervention research design and a mixed method approach to draw conclusions on REDD+ impacts. A theory-based evaluation is then used to understand the underlying causal mechanisms driving the observed changes. In estimating REDD+ impacts on income, we account for potential selection bias by matching pilot and control villages on factors likely to influence selection and outcomes and by using fixed effects panel data modelling. REDD+ impacts on forest carbon are measured using satellite imagery and ground truthing, combining data on the amount of forestland converted to other land uses, with information on how much carbon remains trapped in the forests after the land use changes. Results suggest that in terms of total income, REDD+ neither improves nor harms livelihoods in the two pilot areas. REDD+ however, increased forest income in the Kilosa pilot. REDD+ is also associated with increased forest carbon in both Kilosa and Kondoa. We discuss what could explain these seemingly contradictory developments. Three policy implications arise from the results 1) the need for REDD+ projects to involve NGOs/implementing partners that have a good understanding of local conditions, as local contexts play a central role in determining welfare and forest carbon outcomes 2) the importance of strengthening forest governance and management for facilitating a balance in livelihoods and forest cover improvements and 3) the significance of considering economic risk, safety nets and insurance against risk in the design of REDD+ projects, as a failure to do so, will lead to overexploitation of forests during periods of economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The discovery of natural resources across the African continent brings hope for millions of poor people, but there are long-standing fears that the resources will be a curse rather than a blessing. One of the most frequently claimed effects is that gender inequality in economic opportunities may increase with mining. This paper is the first multi-country quantitative analysis of the local employment impacts for men and women of large-scale mining in the African continent. Using exact mine locations, we merge survey data for 800,000 individuals with data on all mine openings and closings across the continent, which enables a highly localized analysis of spillover effects. We employ a geographic difference-in-difference estimation exploiting the spatial and temporal variation in mining. We show that industrial mine opening is a mixed blessing for women. It triggers a local structural shift, whereby women shift from agricultural self-employment (25% decrease) to the service sector (50% increase), and are 16% more likely to earn cash. However, overall female employment decreases by 8% as agriculture is a larger sector than services. Male partners shift to skilled manual labor, and some find jobs in the mining sector. The effects of mine openings diminish with distance and are close to zero at 50 km from a mine. Mine closure causes the service and skilled sectors to contract. The results are robust to a wide battery of robustness checks, such as using different measures of distance and excluding migrants from the sample. This paper shows that large-scale mining can stimulate nonagricultural sectors in Africa, although it creates local boom-bust economies with transient and gender-specific employment effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centre (ATDC) has been considered as an alternative model to pursue sustainability of Chinese foreign aid to African countries in the new era. This paper attempts to examine the ATDC scheme, particularly focus on the knowledge construction at macro level of design and the knowledge encounter at micro level of daily operation based on the case studies in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. Our study finds multiple facets of the ATDC, i.e., the cleavage between the macro-level of policy design and micro level of implementation realities; the interplay between knowledge and politics, and appearance of possible alternative development pathways stimulated by ATDCs in African countries. The paper argues that even though the ATDC is a technology-centered scheme, it is inevitably a social and political process in implementation, resulting in the discontinuity of the policy results. With a whole set of ideas and imaginaries being delivered, frustrated, and negotiated, the ATDC creates a very different vision to the established CG system, or the western bilateral aid programs. As an embodiment of a “traveling technocratic rationality”, the ATDCs are important sites for negotiations over knowledge and politics, and the meanings of aid, investment, and development, as part of the wider playing out of China’s engagement in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The growing involvement of the Chinese state and business in Africa has generated significant debate about China’s Africa strategy and the benefits for Africa’s development. What is the nature of Chinese state capitalism in Africa? This study examines Chinese state–business relations and argues that China’s involvement in Africa is more complex than often portrayed. It aims to build a closer understanding of the diverse factors that influence the Chinese state–business relations as it is implemented in Africa. This paper focuses on how state–business interactions influence agricultural development outcomes, using six case-studies from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It explores the question of how far the state can control business and direct development by identifying the key relationships that influence the decision-making processes of state and business actors within China and its African engagement. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom of homogenized, unitary relations. It argues that these relations are, in practice, heterogeneous, as a result of the state being disaggregated into a multiplicity of provincial relations and central state agencies, and tensions arising between commercial market and political interests. The active role of African governments in agricultural schemes is also affecting outcomes. China’s engagement is multivariate, involving a multiplicity of agencies, operating at different levels, structures, and processes with sometimes contrary interests and goals. The findings of an analysis of six state–business projects in the agricultural sectors of Zimbabwe and Mozambique suggest that where agriculture is concerned, a wide range of Chinese agencies are involved, with businesses being driven by either market forces or national state interests, which together make outcomes less open to generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper introduces a Special Section on Chinese and Brazilian engagements in African agriculture. The paper asks if a new paradigm for development cooperation is emerging, and argues that we must move beyond the simplistic narratives of either “South–South” collaboration or “neo-imperial” expansion of “rising powers” to look at the dynamic and contested politics of engagement, as new forms of capital and technology enter African contexts. Historical experiences in Brazil and China, as well as domestic political and economic debates, affect how interventions are framed, and by whom, and so influence what technologies are chosen, which investments are funded, and who gets trained. There are both political and economic drivers at the heart of these choices, but these are not uniform or uncontested, either in Brazil and China or in Africa. The Special Section argues for a focus on the encounters on the ground, moving beyond the broader rhetoric and generic policy statements. A key feature of Brazilian and Chinese engagements in African agriculture is the role of state–business relations in shaping and steering development, suggesting new forms of developmentalism. The paper concludes that there is a growing opportunity for learning from the Brazilian and Chinese experience, as this will be a long-run feature of African agricultural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper analyzes the adoption and welfare impacts of improved maize varieties in eastern Zambia using data obtained from a sample of over 800 farm households. Using both propensity score matching and endogenous switching regression models, the paper shows that adoption of improved maize leads to significant gains in crop incomes, consumption expenditure, and food security. Results further show that improved maize varieties have significant poverty-reducing impacts in eastern Zambia. The paper concludes with implications for policies to promote adoption and impacts of modern varieties in Zambia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper studies the impact of gender and ethnicity on educational outcomes in Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, using the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series-International (IPUMS-I) database. Using an estimation method analogous to difference-in-differences, the paper finds that gender-based differences in literacy, primary school completion, and secondary school completion are larger for minority ethnic groups compared to others, or ethnicity-based differences are larger for women compared to men. The findings suggest that the intersection of gender and ethnicity confers cumulative disadvantage for minority groups, especially in Latin American countries, with implications on the design of development programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper investigates intermediate input effects and labor pooling in the context of urban informality, examining the handicraft industry of Nairobi, Kenya. The paper tests if conditions found in informality interfere with transition pathways in production clusters. 102 semi-structured interviews were conducted with industry participants, including 69 production firms. Findings confirm the existence of important agglomeration economies, but those benefits are curtailed due to constraints of informality on firms, especially location constraints in urban space. At the same time, informality also introduces particular diseconomies of agglomeration that undermine the value of proximity of firms to each other, particularly within clusters. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper analyzes the over-indebtedness of microborrowers in Ghana from a customer protection perspective. It measures over-indebtedness as a subjective indicator based on loan-related sacrifices that borrowers report. It finds that male microborrowers are more likely to be over-indebted. So are borrowers with adverse economic shocks, low returns on investment, and non-productive loan use. Over-indebtedness is lower for borrowers with good debt-literacy. General financial literacy and numeracy seem insufficient to reduce over-indebtedness. The paper details the relationship of the above factors to the specific sacrifices borrowers make and suggests that policy measures address the full complexity of the over-indebtedness phenomenon. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper discusses how regime type and state capacity may interact in affecting economic growth. The empirical analysis finds a positive and robust effect of democracy on growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, a continent historically characterized by weak-capacity states. Furthermore, the paper identifies a robust interaction effect between democracy and state capacity on growth, both in Africa and globally; the effect of democracy on growth increases when state capacity is reduced. Democracy is estimated to have a positive effect on growth in weak-capacity states, but not in high-capacity states. Additionally, the results indicate that state capacity enhances growth only in dictatorships. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper estimates the causal effect of maternal participation in adult literacy programs on child mortality in rural Ghana, taking into account the possible endogeneity of program participation and endogenous program placement. Adult literacy program participation has a substantial impact on child mortality and is also cost-effective in reducing child mortality. The combined results of this paper point toward the potentially important role of adult literacy programs in promoting child health in Ghana through the acquisition of health knowledge by participants—in stark contrast with the decreased attention toward such programs in the developing world in recent years. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper revisits the link between fixed exchange rate regimes and trade in the context of Africa’s exchange rate arrangements, differentiating the effects of hard pegs (currency unions) from conventional soft pegs. Using a novel dataset of exchange rate regime classification, the paper augments the gravity model of bilateral trade flows with measures of currency unions and conventional pegged arrangements, and benchmarks Africa’s experience against the rest of the world. We find that in both samples, currency unions and pegs increase trade vis-à-vis more flexible exchange rate arrangements through channels in addition to reduced exchange rate volatility; however the effect is almost twice as large for Africa. In addition, the trade-generating effect of pegs is at least as large for Africa as that of currency unions, suggesting that pegs could present a viable option—perhaps an alternative to currency unions—to promote trade in the region. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines the effect of the global financial crisis on the delivery of HIV and AIDS-related services in Malawi. It does so by examining the direct effect of the crisis on Malawi’s economy and the financing experience of civil society organization involved in the delivery of services. The paper finds that Malawi’s economy survived the global crisis relatively unscathed but there was clear evidence of a sharp deterioration in funding for agencies engaged in HIV- and AIDS-related programs in 2008 and 2009. Thus the gap between service delivery and service demand appears to have increased considerably in those years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper presents a framework for understanding the impacts of civil war, displaced populations, and humanitarian assistance on host populations in semi-urban areas. Our model shows that under conditions of conflict where populations flow from rural to urban areas and food aid follows, changes in food, housing and labor markets result in changes to local prices which will potentially impoverish consumers but provide earning opportunities for property owners and suppliers of non-tradable goods, and that the price dynamics are likely to induce significant land use change. We combine satellite, price, aid delivery and population inflow data with qualitative interviews from Nyala, Darfur. The data confirm the hypotheses, and the paper discusses possible policy responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We developed a comprehensive and spatially disaggregated typology to identify and locate major food security bottlenecks. • The typology is conceptually sound, operationally flexible, and less data intensive. • Intervention types and levels of production, access, and utilization efficiency were identified for rural areas in the DRC. • The efficiency profile of nine high-priority territories was discussed in more detail using secondary data. • The proposed approach can be adjusted to fit the conditions of most developing countries. In this paper we develop a typology to help design and improve spatial targeting of food and nutrition security (FNS) interventions. Using a comprehensive framework, the proposed approach allows for the broad identification and location of major food security bottlenecks. The resulting typology is based on an amendable demarcation of areas in a four-indicator diagram representing the four core dimensions of FNS. The proposed typology is applied to the rural territories of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Despite a continuum of heterogenous development challenges across the country, the typology helps identify clusters of territories that suffer from production, access, and utilization constraints. For the nine territories (out of 145) with the highest child stunting levels, we identify four broad intervention zones and analyze their efficiency profile in more detail. Despite its reductionist nature, our typology is conceptually sound, operationally flexible, and less data intensive, important features to promote evidence-based policymaking in contexts characterized by imperfect and scarce data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Mental health data, particular nationally representative panel data, is extremely rare in low-income countries, including South Africa. • We provide the first nationally representative estimates of intergenerational transmission of mental health in Sub-Saharan Africa. • We find high rates of mental illness among adolescents, and high rates of intergenerational transmission from parent to child. • Using nationally representative panel data, we find parental mental illness is the largest determinant of adolescent mental illness. • Using exogenous variation, we find a large negative effect of cash transfers on intergenerational transmission, a previously unstudied phenomenon. Abstract Mental illness and substance abuse makes up the leading cause of disability among adolescents globally, and yet adolescent mental health is an understudied area in developing countries. Using data from South Africa, this paper provides the first nationally representative estimates of the inter-generational transmission of depressive symptoms in Sub-Saharan Africa, using data from 2012. Using a longitudinal household survey, we find that one-third of South African adolescents will suffer from depressive symptoms if either parent does so - and that parental mental health is the single largest determinant of child mental health. We exploit the exogenous variation in the roll-out pattern of an unconditional cash transfer in South Africa, and find that the South African child support grant is associated with a reduction in the intergenerational transmission of depressive symptomatology to adolescent children by more than forty percent. This potentially mitigating effect is larger for female adolescents, who are more likely to be affected negatively by parental mental illness than male adolescents. This is not to deny the importance of the shared household environment on the mental health of both adolescents and parents, but in the absence of sufficient treatment for mental illness among South African youth, the child support grant appears to play a crucial role in supporting mental health outcomes amongst low-income adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We find that solar PV adoption rates are persistently lower for credit constrained households in Uganda. • For a large number of the poor, credit constraints serve as a permanent barrier. • Presence of well-functioning second-hand markets for solar PVs enhance consumption and welfare. • Polices that relax access to credit and facilitate second-hand markets are needed to promote solar PV adoption. Abstract Access to electricity in rural Sub-Saharan Africa, where livelihoods are predominantly based on small scale farming, is significantly low. Extending centralised national electricity grids to these rural areas faces significant technical and financial constraints. As a result, many see household-financed decentralised technologies such as small standalone solar photovoltaic (PV) systems as being important for achieving greater electricity access. However, rural farm households typically face a range of market imperfections including lack of access to credit, investment irreversibility (or absence of second-hand markets) and farm production/income risk which act as barriers to their ability and/or willingness to invest. This paper examines how these market imperfections impact on the adoption of standalone solar PV systems for small scale farm households in Uganda. We consider how temporary or permanent these barriers to adoption are when farm production/income is uncertain. We do so by using a dynamic programming model which captures household investment in small scale solar PV systems where significant positive benefits arise through assumed improved farm productivity or income effects, while allowing for credit constraints, investment irreversibility and income risk. Although strong positive incentives exist in the model to adopt a solar PV system, the results show that adoption rates are substantially lower for credit constrained households, with only 40% of these households adopting immediately, compared with over 70% of credit unconstrained households. While these adoption rates do increase over time, only 60% of credit constrained households have adopted within 5 years compared with nearly all credit unconstrained households adopting within the same time period. In the longer term for almost 30% of households the credit constraints act as a permanent barrier to adoption. The presence of a well-functioning second-hand market does increase household consumption and welfare but the impacts on overall adoption rates are rather small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Evidence suggests that corruption is costly for African firms. This paper, however, shows that a minor difference in the way the question on bribe payments is asked has a large effect on estimates of the size of the burden. On average, firms report payments that are between 4 and 15 times higher when they report them as a percent of sales than when they report them in monetary terms. The paper discusses several possible reasons for this, but none explain the difference. One plausible remaining reason is that firm managers overestimate bribes when they report them in percentage terms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Health insurance can improve health-seeking behaviors and protect consumption from health shocks but may also crowd out informal insurance. This paper therefore examines whether impacts of health insurance depend on households’ access to informal insurance, as proxied for by mobile money usage. Based on high-frequency financial diaries data collected in rural Kenya, we find that households with weaker access to informal insurance cope with uninsured health shocks by lowering subsequent non-health expenditures by approximately 25 percent. These same households are able to smooth consumption when health shocks are insured, due to lower out-of-pocket health expenditures. In contrast, households with access to informal insurance are able to smooth consumption even in the absence of formal health insurance. For this latter group, health insurance increases healthcare utilization at formal clinics and does not crowd out gifts and remittances during weeks with health shocks. These findings provide guidance for insurance schemes aiming to target the most vulnerable populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The causal relationship between land tenure security and agricultural investment plays a crucial role in the process of rural development. Land property rights are key determinants for reducing poverty through agricultural productivity, natural resource management, and socio-economic inequalities. Growing competition for land access increases the sensitivity in land socio-economic stakes and related policies in developing countries. This paper analyzes the impacts of land rights on land-related investment in rural Burkina Faso. We use rural representative panel data and appropriate methods. The Two-Stage Conditional Maximum Likelihood approach is used for dealing with endogeneity, while the Generalized Structural Equation Model allows us to control for random effects. We show that stronger land rights increase land-attached investment, and land investment has positive and negative effect on stronger and weaker land rights, respectively, in rural Burkina Faso. Our study also finds that women and immigrants have less land rights than men and natives, respectively. Our contribution to related literature includes the use of rigorous process of hierarchy in land rights. The close link of the results with land right strength is of great interest for cautious practitioners in land tenure and investment. Moreover, our results imply that a gain of efficiency can be achieved from combining practices in land tenure and investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a growing recognition of the significance of farmer-led irrigation, externally engineered and induced schemes remain a popular model for irrigation development in sub-Saharan Africa. These have had a mixed record, and many have been widely critiqued. Nonetheless, schemes that were initiated under colonialism have been rehabilitated and new schemes are still being developed. This paper interrogates the continuing attraction of this model for irrigation, asking how and why it persists. Is the fact that engineering is so central to irrigation schemes another example of ‘high modernism’, as Scott might argue? Analysis of the history and current policy-making context of a new irrigation scheme in Malawi suggests a picture that is more complex, in which practical engineering considerations combine with narratives of modernisation and political imperatives to create momentum and lock-in. Understanding this, and why lessons from the past inadequately shape future-directed planning requires interrogation of the positionality of those involved, including state, donors and private sector actors and the political, economic and discursive fields in which they operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: South Africa’s Disability Grant (DG) program has been criticized for its poor administration and the dependency culture it promotes. This paper assesses the program’s targeting effectiveness and its effects on labor supply. Using disability self-reports and standard measures of economic well being, the results suggest that DG’s inclusion errors are relatively limited but exclusion errors are substantial and serious. The paper also shows that increased leniency in disability screening policy in the Gauteng province in the early 2000s does not appear to have altered labor market behaviors relative to Northern Cape, a province where there was no change in policy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Two opposing views exist in the literature on the potential role that international fish trade plays in economic development. While some claim that fish trade has a pro-poor effect, others denounce the negative effect of fish export on local populations’ food security and doubt its contributions to the macro-economy. In this paper, we explore this debate in sub-Saharan Africa. Our analysis did not find any evidence of direct negative impact of fish trade on food security; neither did it find evidence that international fish trade generates positive, pro-poor outcomes. This paper discusses the possible reasons for this apparent lack of development impact and highlights the unsupported assumptions underlying the current discourse about international fish trade. We suggest that, given lack of evidence for the development benefits of fish trade between Africa and developed countries, fisheries policy could consider support for regional (Africa-to-Africa) trade that meets the growing African demand for lower-value fish. Means of overcoming barriers to intra-African trade in fish are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Much attention has been paid to helping economies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The conventional instruments for providing assistance have been foreign aid disbursements and debt relief. But have debt relief initiatives complemented or substituted for other aid? Has debt relief been additional? This paper examines the evolving relationship between debt relief and other foreign aid in SSA using recently constructed and improved data. Estimating a model of aid allocation for 42 SSA countries using panel data for 1988–2006, it finds that the relationships between debt, debt relief, aid, and resource transfers have changed over time. This paper interprets how policy changes may have modified the underlying relationship between aid and debt relief. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: The objective of this paper is to provide quantitative evidence on the impacts of migrant associations on local development in rural Burkina Faso. We exploit a national retrospective community survey of 600 settlements conducted in 2002. Using longitudinal data and event-history models, we show significant effects of migrant associations on the creation of schools, health centers, and roads, while the direct effects on other facilities and on modernization of agriculture are non-significant. The paper also explores whether the impact of migrant associations varies according to the period and to some characteristics of the associations (location and age of the association). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Empirical explorations of the growth and aggregate productivity impacts of infrastructure have been characterized by ambiguous (countervailing signs) results with little robustness. This paper, utilizing panel data for South African manufacturing over the 1970–2000 period, and a range of 19 infrastructure measures, explores the question of infrastructure endogeneity in output equations. The paper develops an instrumentation strategy generalizable to other contexts. Controlling for the possibility of endogeneity in the infrastructure measures renders the impact of infrastructure capital not only positive, but of economically meaningful magnitudes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper analyzes the inequality and determinants of flexibility in smallholder land access in post-war northern Mozambique. This paper demonstrates that high land endowments in aggregate do not imply equal access to cultivated or fallow land at the household level, even if land access has some flexibility across time. A formal test establishes the low extent of flexibility in land access at the household level in the study site. The econometric analysis further reveals that some groups of households such as female-headed households and those with low asset endowments or weak social institutions suffer from significant rigidities in land access. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines the convergence and divergence of results from economic studies of the relationships between land tenure security and agricultural productivity in Africa and how these results have been incorporated into recent agricultural, poverty alleviation, and land policy documents. The paper finds that there are both areas of convergence and divergence in the economics literature. Similarly, the attention given to land tenure and its perceived effects on productivity varies considerably in the policy literature. The significant heterogeneity in findings itself suggests that policy responses must pay attention to local context and the overarching macro and sectoral conditions within which tenure systems operate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Risk pooling literature argues the need for geographic proximity to ensure the functioning of informal insurance arrangements. This paper investigates whether these arrangements exist between migrants and their network members back home and, if so, how they work in the absence of geographic proximity. Analysis of a simultaneous matched sample of migrants in the Netherlands and network members in Ghana reveals the existence of reverse remittances. These remittances show that there is risk pooling between migrants and network members. The paper elaborates on the institutional arrangements that make such a system possible. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper assesses the effect of the steadily growing remittance flows to sub-Saharan Africa. Though the region receives only a small portion of the total recorded remittances to developing countries, and the volume of aid flows to sub-Saharan Africa swamps remittances, this paper finds that remittances, which are a stable, private transfer, have a direct poverty-mitigating effect, and promote financial development. These findings hold even after factoring in the reverse causality between remittances, poverty, and financial development. The paper posits that formalizing such flows can serve as an effective access point for “unbanked” individuals, and households. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper assessed the relative economic efficiency and output supply and input demand responses of women farmers in western Kenya. The results showed that women are as technically and allocatively efficient as men. However, neither men nor women have absolute allocative efficiency. Women farmers are equally responsive to price incentives in terms of output supply and input demand. While education and extension contact have significant effects on overall maize supply and input demand, only extension contact has significant effects among women farmers. The paper discusses a number of significant results and concludes with implications for policy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines the effect of household access to microcredit upon work by 7–11-year-old children in rural Malawi. Given that microcredit organizations foster household enterprises wherein much child labor is engaged, this paper aims to discover whether access to microcredit might increase work by children. It is found that, in the season of peak labor demand, household access to microcredit, measured as self-assessed credit limits at microcredit organizations, raises the probability of child work in households with average landholdings and retail sales enterprises. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper analyzes the phenomenon of fish-for-sex in small-scale fisheries and discusses its apparent links to HIV/AIDS and transactional sex practices. The research reveals that fish-for-sex is not an anecdotal phenomenon but a practice increasingly reported in many different developing countries, with the largest number of cases observed in Sub-Saharan African inland fisheries. An overview of the main narratives that attempt to explain the occurrence of FFS practices is presented, along with other discourses and preconceptions, and their limits discussed. The analysis outlines the many different and complex dimensions of fish-for-sex transactions. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper analyzes the distributional impacts of recent debt relief initiatives among four groups of countries: the heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs), the other IDA-eligible countries, the non-IDA developing countries, and the industrialized countries. The distributional impacts are subject to two major questions: (a) is debt relief additional to donors’ traditional aid budgets? and (b) will donors make reallocations of their traditional aid budgets to HIPCs due to debt relief provided to them? The paper’s analytical framework then establishes certain benchmark scenarios for the two previous questions which allows to approximate some realistic outcomes and to draw some policy recommendations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper investigates whether preference heterogeneity between spouses contributes to limited cash crop production in Southern Ethiopia. Using the value of livestock each spouse would take in the event of divorce as a measure of bargaining power; this paper shows a significant negative correlation between the bargaining power proxies and coffee output. Livestock ownership during marriage does not have a significant impact on coffee production. In contrast to the case in commercial production, women’s exit options have a weak, positive effect on production of the staple crop, enset. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper reflects on an experience of integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches to sampling, data collection, data types, and analysis in a study of destitution in Ethiopia. It focuses on three “qualitative” elements within the household questionnaire: (1) a holistic self-assessment of household dependence; (2) household-level recall questions to estimate trends in the absence of time-series data; and (3) proportional piling (a quantification technique widely used in participatory fieldwork) to estimate income diversification. The paper concludes that the pragmatic combination of qualitative and quantitative elements was successful, and indeed essential, in addressing the study’s policy-oriented research questions: however, tensions and trade-offs remain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper considers whether Africa can absorb a doubling of aid. If oil revenues provide a “natural experiment” the results are disappointing: far from being transformational, they have been markedly less successful than aid. One implication is that the delivery modalities of aid, though heavily criticized, have substantially added value: the paper discusses which modalities may have been most useful. Unfortunately, aid appears to be subject to diminishing returns, so that doubling aid through conventional modalities would not double its impact. The paper concludes by considering innovations in aid modalities, which might offset diminishing returns. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]