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The quest for structural transformation has been a crucial challenge in Africa in spite of the huge amounts of aid disbursed, investments undertaken, policies implemented, etc. Notwithstanding several important reasons highlighted in the literature, they are insufficient because they focus on the role of financial resources but neglect non-financial issues and resources that are required to guarantee efficient mobilisation, utilisation and prudent management of public resources. Consequently, this paper examines these non-financial issues and resources through a systematic review of the relevant literature and analysis of their contents. The major finding was that most policy efforts at structurally transforming finance in Africa achieved little success because they were not rooted in the continent's cultures and traditions, which should be employed to enhance sound financial management and control systems.

In this article we address the debate on regional skills formation systems in Africa. We draw on the social ecosystems model (SEM) developed by Hodgson and Spours to analyse data from four case studies that reflect the complexities of African economies, rural and urban, formal and informal. The SEM model helps us focus on the three dimensions of a strong skills ecosystem: collaboration between a range of actors, key institutions and system leaders within the region (the horizontal); top-down policies, regulations, and funding streams that enable or constrain the regional skills ecosystem (the vertical); and the points where these two interact, often through mediation activities. In the case of the last of these three, our cases point to the importance of nurturing organisations which can provide SEM leadership, particularly in more fragile ecosystems. Yet, in none of the cases, are public vocational institutions playing the strong anchor role envisaged in the model. The significance of the paper lies in three ways it develops the SEM in relation to regional skills ecosystems. First, we problematise the notion of a facilitatory state and place it within wider national and global webs of power. Second, we insist that the local or regional is always embedded in and networked into myriad national and international levels. This requires a more complex understanding of how social skills ecosystems operate. Third, the notion of an anchor institution requires further elaboration. In most social ecosystems these institutions need to be built or strengthened and a clearer understanding is required of the processes of institutionalisation and what mechanisms make it possible to build this capacity and sustain it over time.

This paper reviews the ongoing failure of hybrid transgenic Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton unique to India. The underlying cause for this failure is the high cost of hybrid seed that imposes a suboptimal long-season low plant density system that limits yield potential and has associated elevated levels of late-season pests. Indian hybrid Bt cotton production is further complicated by the development of resistance to Bt toxins in the key pest, the native pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella Saunders, PBW), resulting in increased insecticide use that induces ecological disruption and outbreaks of highly destructive secondary pests. Rainfed cotton production uncertainty is further exacerbated by the variable monsoon rains. While hybrid cotton produces fertile seed, the resulting plant phenotypes are highly variable preventing farmers from replanting saved seed, forcing them to buy seed yearly (i.e., market capture), and effectively protecting industry Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). The lessons gained from the ongoing market failure of hybrid Bt cotton in India are of utmost importance to its proposed introduction to Africa where, similar to India, cotton is grown mainly in poor rainfed smallholder family farms, and hence similar private–corporate conflicts of interest will occur. Holistic field agroecological studies and weather-driven mechanistic analyses are suggested to help foresee ecological and economic challenges in cotton production in Africa. High-density short-season (HD-SS) non-hybrid non-genetically modified irrigated and rainfed cottons are viable alternatives for India that can potentially produce double the yields of the current low-density hybrid system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outsourcing of health-commodity supplies to third-party logistics providers is one of the ways of reducing costs and/or improving service levels in the public sector. This paper evaluates three forms of outsourcing: full outsourcing of inventory management, partial outsourcing of specific activities, and contingent partial outsourcing of specific logistics activities. It notes that, in Africa, contracting-out supply logistics has mostly taken the form of partial outsourcing of transportation only or storage and transportation of specific health commodities to all or selected geographical regions. Partial outsourcing offers limited benefits since it cannot provide adequate pressures on public-sector logistics to be efficient or maintain uninterrupted supplies in times of catastrophes. Improvements in logistics performance achieved through partial outsourcing should not mask the need for more expansive arrangements that support not only partial outsourcing but also full outsourcing in situations of inefficiency and in times of supply-disruption catastrophe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of the nineteenth century, British imperial doctors found that the glycerinated lymph they received from British-based pharmaceutical companies became inert, failing to protect colonial populations against smallpox. Colonial doctors and their British suppliers thus took a fresh look at the preservation media used for lymph as they discovered how different kinds of lymph reacted to 'tropical' climates. British lymph distributors like the Society of Apothecaries sought to maintain their economic hold and influence on the colonies, which provided them with significant commercial outlets to sell lymph, through exploring new modes of preserving lymph. Colonial doctors, however, used the issue to argue for the ability to locally produce vaccine, creating a more economical and dependable production line for the colonies. Building on scholarship on imperial climates, public health, and pharmaceutical manufacturing, I argue that together, colonial climates and local preferences forced calf vaccine lymph producers and users in Britain to redefine their ideas about what constituted smallpox vaccination. These issues affected where colonial lymph was produced and who benefited from lymph's economic power and scientific authority across international borders, exposing how the tropical colonial climate shifted how long-standing medical technologies were produced and distributed across international borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic uncertainty is a driver of the business cycle. Its leading properties make it a key advanced indicator to assess the impact of socioeconomic factors on suicide for prevention purposes. This paper evaluates the effect of economic uncertainty on suicide rates worldwide. Uncertainty is gauged by a global economic policy uncertainty index. Suicide rates from 183 countries between 2000 and 2019 are matched to annual economic uncertainty, controlling for unemployment and economic growth in a fixed-effects panel model. Overall, the analysis suggests that increases in lagged economic uncertainty, as well as in unemployment and economic growth, may lead to an increased risk of suicide. When replicating the experiment for different regions of the world, the greatest impact of an increase in economic uncertainty can be found in Africa and the Middle East. Given the anticipatory nature of economic uncertainty regarding the evolution of economies, and its relationship with suicide rates, the results highlight the usefulness of uncertainty indicators as tools for the early detection of periods of increased suicide risk and the design of suicide prevention strategies. • Examination of the relationship between economic uncertainty and suicide worldwide. • Estimation of a panel model for 183 countries between 2000 and 2019. • Greatest impact of global economic uncertainty found in Africa and the Middle East. • Lagged uncertainty, unemployment and economic growth lead to increases in suicide. • Uncertainty proxies provide an early signal of periods of increased suicide risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past two decades, economic history has been marked by an increasing turn toward global frameworks and analyses, but these still tend to omit the African continent prior to the nineteenth century. This article explores this omission beginning with an examination of the historiographical roots of this absence from the perspective of both economic history and African history. From its inception, economics depended on the displacing of African economic actors from global frameworks. Meanwhile, the emergence of African history as a discipline in the 1960s also saw the displacement of indigenous economic actors from precolonial frameworks. Linking African economic activity to new perspectives on capitalism—focusing on the connection of enslaved and wage labor in precolonial manufacturing—this article seeks to repair this striking omission. It argues that the history of capitalism cannot be fully global until African frameworks are properly included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]