THE IMPACT OF THE 2008-2009 CRISIS ON COMMODITY-DEPENDENT LOW-INCOME AFRICAN COUNTRIES: CONFIRMING THE RELEVANCE OF THE CONCEPT OF POVERTY TRAP?

Focusing on low-income commodity-dependent sub-Saharan African countries, the paper argues that the impact of the 2008-2009 crisis, and more generally, these countries' growth trajectories, can be explained by the concept of the poverty trap. This is not trivial, because commodity-based traps remain debated: some countries have grounded their growth on the export of commodities, and the impact of commodity price fluctuations may be analysed through other concepts (such as cycles). Against these views, it shows that these countries' growth trajectories exhibit the three key theoretical features of poverty traps: threshold effects, cumulative causation and low equilibria. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]