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on Africa |
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Issue of 2006‒06‒17
eight papers chosen by Suzanne McCoskey Foreign Service Institute, US Department of State |
| By: | Lulama Ndibongo Traub; T.S. Jayne (Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University) |
| Abstract: | Maize meal is a staple food in South Africa, particularly among the poor. The South African government by the mid-1980s enacted a series of legislations aimed at reducing the role of government within the market and placing increasing reliance on market forces and the private sector. Ex post studies of the impact of maize market reform in neighboring countries found that, in general, the reforms led to lower maize milling/retailing margins in real terms. However, in the case of South Africa, recent analysis indicates that maize market reform has not reduced processing and retailing margins in the maize meal supply chain. The study objectives are to determine actual and potential consumer demand for the types of maize meal capable of being produced by small-scale mills, to measure the potential impact of small-scale grain retailing and milling channels on households’ disposable income and food security, and to identify the factors responsible for the negligible role of small-scale milling sector in South Africa. |
| Keywords: | food security, food policy, maize, marketing, South Africa |
| JEL: | F14 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:msu:idpwrk:085&r=afr |
| By: | Adama Zerbo (CED / IFReDE-GRES, Université Montesquieu Bordeaux IV) |
| Abstract: | Ce travail avait pour objectif d’examiner la capacité des économies locales à réduire significativement la pauvreté par la création d’opportunités d’emplois décents. A cet effet, il a tenté de surmonter les difficultés d’ordre conceptuel relatives au fonctionnement du marché du travail urbain en Afrique subsaharienne en proposant un nouveau cadre théorique. Ce cadre a permis d’appréhender l’offre de travail local dans sa dynamique et de cerner les changements sur le marché du travail urbain en cas de chocs économiques et démographiques. De ces analyses, il ressort notamment que les politiques de relance des économies urbaines devront être soutenues par des stratégies de réduction de la pauvreté afin de limiter les effets pervers de la privation de capabilités sur la croissance économique. Par ailleurs, le succès de la relance des économies urbaines passe par des mesures d’amélioration des niveaux de vie dans les milieux ruraux pour éviter une précarisation persistante de l’emploi urbain liée aux effets pervers de l’exode rural. En Afrique subsaharienne, les politiques de développement urbain doivent donc adopter une approche globale et intégrée de relance de l’économie locale et de lutte contre la privation de capabilités élémentaires. This paper aimed to examine the capacity of the local economies to reduce poverty by the creation of decent jobs. To that effect, it tried to overcome the conceptual difficulties of the urban labour market in sub-Saharan Africa by proposing a new theoretical framework. With this framework, we apprehend the urban work supply in its dynamics and determine the changes on the urban labour market in the event of economic and demographic shocks. From these analyses, it comes out that the urban economies boost policies will have to be supported by poverty reduction strategies in order to limit the perverse effects of deprivation of capabilities on the economic growth. In addition, the success of these policies passes by measures of improvement of living standards in the rural areas to avoid a persistent degradation of urban employment related to the perverse rural migration effects. Thus, in sub-Saharan Africa, urban development policies must adopt a global and integrated measures to boost local economy and fight against the deprivation of elementary capabilities. (Full text in french) |
| JEL: | I31 I32 |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mon:ceddtr:129&r=afr |
| By: | Ayalneh Bogale (Department of Agricultural Economics,University of Alemaya, P.O. Box 170, Alemaya, Ethiopia); Benedikt Korf (Department of Geography, University of Liverpool, Roxby Building, Liverpool L69 7ZT, UK) |
| Abstract: | It is often argued that environmental scarcity was a trigger and source of violent conflict, in particular in African countries. At the root of such arguments is a simple environmental determinism, which understands scarcity as undermining co-operative relationships between competing resource users. Robert Kaplan popularised this thesis in his argument about "The Coming Anarchy", where he interpreted recent civil wars in Africa as an advent of a fundamental environmental crisis. In our view, this conception disregards the crucial role of local-level institutions in governing competing resource claims. In this paper, we present a case study from the violence-prone Somali Region, Ethiopia. We analyse how agro-pastoralist communities develop sharing arrangements on pasture resources with intruding pastoralist communities in drought years, even though this places additional pressure on their grazing resource. A household survey investigates the determinants for different households in the agro-pastoralist community, asset-poor and wealthy ones, to enter into different types of sharing arrangements. Our findings suggest that resource sharing offers asset-poor households opportunities to stabilise and enhance their asset-base in drought years, providing incentives for co-operative rather than conflictive relations with intruding pastoralists. We conclude that it may depend on potential incentives arising from institutional arrangements, whether competing resource claims in periods of environmental scarcity are resolved peacefully or violently. |
| Date: | 2005–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hah:icardp:1005&r=afr |
| By: | Denis H. Acclassato (LEO - Laboratoire d'économie d'Orleans - [CNRS : UMR6221] - [Université d'Orléans]) |
| Abstract: | L'importance des Institutions de Microfinance (IMF) dans les pays en développement n'est plus à démontrer. Elles ont accompli un miracle en permettant à des milliers d'exclus du système bancaire classique d'accéder à des services financiers. Mais une polémique nait quant aux coûts élevés associés à ces services. Cette étude a évalué, à partir d'une base de données financée par l'Association ‘‘Consortium Alafia'' des praticiens de la microfinance au Bénin, le niveau de taux d'intérêt viable pour la microfinance en termes d'offre de services financiers. Les résultats montrent que les micro-projets dont le taux de rentabilité interne ne dépasse pas 36% ne pourraient être financés par les Institutions de Microfinance. La réglementation sur l'usure pourrait donc être suicidaire pour les IMF si elle se bornait simplement à obliger les IMF à se conformer à la loi qui fixe le seuil d'usure à 27%. Quasiment aucune IMF n'assurerait son autosuffisance opérationnelle, donc sa pérennité, en respectant ce seuil. |
| Keywords: | Taux d'intérêt effectif ; Viabilité financière ; Pauvreté ; Institution de Microfinance |
| Date: | 2006–06–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:papers:halshs-00079019_v1&r=afr |
| By: | Derek Headey (CEPA - School of Economics, The University of Queensland) |
| Abstract: | Previous aid effectiveness studies have typically attempted to identify recipient-side conditions of aid effectiveness – such as “good policies”, political and economic stability, and “tropical effects” – using cross-country growth regressions. An obvious omission from this list of conditions is the extent by which donors are concerned with achieving geopolitical rather than developmental objectives, which may reduce aid effectiveness insofar as strategic donors have less incentive to hold the recipient government accountable for the developmentally effective use of aid receipts. Aid allocation regressions can (and are) used to demonstrate the importance of geopolitical considerations, but the author also shows that such regressions cannot be used to instrument for aid in a second stage growth regression, as is standard practice in this literature, because to do so would invoke the untested assumption that strategically motivated aid is just as effective as developmentally motivated aid. Instead the author tests the effect of lagged aid flows on growth, and subsequently demonstrates that: aggregate aid flows are estimated to have significant but moderately sized effects on growth; multilateral aid flows have roughly twice the effect of bilateral flows; but that the lower average effects of bilateral aid nevertheless obscure a substantial degree of heterogeneity in the bilateral aid coefficient which is again explained by the degree to which these flows are indeed strategically motivated. |
| Date: | 2005–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qld:uqcepa:15&r=afr |
| By: | Daron Acemoglu; Simon Johnson |
| Abstract: | What is the effect of increasing life expectancy on economic growth? To answer this question, we exploit the international epidemiological transition, the wave of international health innovations and improvements that began in the 1940s. We obtain estimates of mortality by disease before the 1940s from the League of Nations and national public health sources. Using these data, we construct an instrument for changes in life expectancy, referred to as predicted mortality, which is based on the pre-intervention distribution of mortality from various diseases around the world and dates of global interventions. We document that predicted mortality has a large and robust effect on changes in life expectancy starting in 1940, but no effect on changes in life expectancy before the interventions. The instrumented changes in life expectancy have a large effect on population; a 1% increase in life expectancy leads to an increase in population of about 1.5%. Life expectancy has a much smaller effect on total GDP both initially and over a 40-year horizon, however. Consequently, there is no evidence that the large exogenous increase in life expectancy led to a significant increase in per capita economic growth. These results confirm that global efforts to combat poor health conditions in less developed countries can be highly effective, but also shed doubt on claims that unfavorable health conditions are the root cause of the poverty of some nations. |
| JEL: | I10 O40 J11 |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12269&r=afr |
| By: | Alistair Munro (Department of Economics, Royal Holloway, University of London); Bereket Kebede (School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK); Vegard Iversen (School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK); Cecile Jackson (School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK); Arjan Verschoor (School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK) |
| Abstract: | We test core theories of the household using variants of a public good game and experimental data from 240 couples in rural Uganda. Spouses do not maximise surplus from cooperation and realise a greater surplus when women are in charge. This violates assumptions of unitary and cooperative models. When women control the common account, they receive less than when men control it; this contradicts standard bargaining models. Women contribute less than men and are rewarded more generously by men than vice versa. This casts doubt on postulates in Sen (1990). While the absence of altruism is rejected, we find evidence for opportunism. The results are put in a socioeconomic context using quantitative and qualitative survey data. Assortative matching and correlates of bargaining power influence behaviour within the experiments. Our findings suggest that a ‘one-size fits all’ model of the household is unlikely to be satisfactory. |
| Keywords: | experiment, household theories, Uganda, unitary model, cooperative model |
| JEL: | D13 C92 C93 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hol:holodi:0601&r=afr |
| By: | Cynthia Donovan (Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University); Megan McGlinchy; John Staatz; David Tschirley |
| Abstract: | This desk study is designed to assist WFP and other humanitarian agencies in understanding markets as they relate to emergencies, particularly the assessment of the impacts of emergencies and food aid deliveries on local commodity markets. In this work, we will focus on the impact of actual food commodity distribution on commodity markets, one of the most common emergency response alternatives. However, the report widens the debate to assist humanitarian agencies in seeing the link between actions taken by and with households and individuals during and after an emergency, the effects those actions have on markets, but also effects that market structure and performance may have in mitigating food insecurity. |
| Keywords: | food security, food policy, food aid |
| JEL: | Q18 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:msu:idpwrk:087&r=afr |