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on Africa |
| By: | Bonga-Bonga, Lumengo |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses which of the policy between fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policies can redress external imbalances in the three largest African countries, namely Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt. To this end, use is made of the panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model to assess the dynamic effects of fiscal, monetary and exchange rate shocks mainly on the current account balances. The findings of the paper indicate that contrary to many emerging and developed economies the current account reacts to fiscal, monetary and exchange rate shocks in the three largest economies in Africa. More particular, the results of the empirical analysis show that the appreciation of the currency in the three economies lead to current account surplus. This is mainly attributed to the fact that most African economies have a high propensity to import with limited productive capacity for exports. |
| Keywords: | African economies, external imbalances, PVAR, macroeconomic policies |
| JEL: | C5 E60 |
| Date: | 2017–05–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:79490&r=afr |
| By: | Bhorat, Haroon; Kanbur, Ravi; Rooney, Christopher; Steenkamp, François |
| Abstract: | As Africa's working age population continues to grow rapidly, the region needs to experience both economic growth and high levels of job creation before it can realize the demographic dividend. This paper uses economic complexity analytics to provide product-level insights into sub-Saharan Africa's development path in comparison with that of the Eastern and Southern Asian regions. Specific emphasis is placed on the evolution of the manufacturing sector within these regions. The analysis from this study shows a sub-Saharan African (SSA) productive structure that is disconnected and characterized by products with low levels of economic complexity. The study further shows that the productive structure in SSA is inherently characterized by lower levels of economic complexity, which informed the notion of limited productive capabilities. This stands in contrast to the East and South Asian productive structure, which is connected and complex. This result implies that while the sheer scale and diversity of the manufacturing sector in Asia allows for the generation of a large number and diversity of employment opportunities that of the African manufacturing sector is marginal in nature and points to limited employment opportunities. |
| Keywords: | Manufacturing sector; economic complexity; employment opportunities; sub-Saharan Africa. |
| JEL: | J01 L60 N67 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12073&r=afr |
| By: | Simone Tagliapietra |
| Abstract: | Electrification is one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most pressing socio-economic challenges. Less than a third of the sub-Saharan population has access to electricity, and around 600,000 premature deaths are caused each year by household air pollution resulting from the use of polluting fuels for cooking and lighting. Solving this issue is a fundamental prerequisite for unleashing sub-Saharan Africa’s economic potential. Given the magnitude of the challenge, only a joint effort involving sub-Saharan African countries and international public and private parties would pave the way to a solution. Sub-Saharan African countries should be the first to move. They should reform the governance of their energy sectors, in particular by reforming their generally inefficient state-owned electricity utilities, and by phasing-out market-distorting energy subsidies. Without such reforms, international investment will never scale-up across sub-Saharan Africa. International public and private parties must play a key role in facilitating sub-Saharan Africa’s energy transformation, particularly the electrification of rural areas, where three-fifths of the sub-Saharan African population lives. International public support is particularly important to crowd-in international private investors, most notably through innovative public-private partnerships. China and the United States are already engaged in electrification in sub-Saharan Africa. China has substantially invested in large-scale electricity projects, while the US has put in place a comprehensive initiative – Power Africa – to scale-up electrification, particularly in rural areas, through public-private partnerships. Europe has, instead, created a myriad of fragmented initiatives to promote electrification in sub-Saharan Africa, limiting their potential leverage in crowding-in private investment and in stimulating energy sector reforms in sub-Saharan African countries. This sub-optimal situation should be changed by coordinating the initiatives of European institutions and EU countries through a unique platform. We propose such a platform - the EU Electrify Africa Hotspot. |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bre:polcon:20882&r=afr |
| By: | Marc Sangnier; Yanos Zylberberg |
| Abstract: | This paper provides empirical evidence that, after protests, citizens substantially revise their views on the current leader, but also their trust in the country's institutions. The empirical strategy exploits variation in the timing of an individual level survey and the proximity to social protests in 13 African countries. First, we find that trust in political leaders strongly and abruptly decreases after protests. Second, trust in the country monitoring institutions plunges as well. Both effects are much stronger when protests are repressed by the government. As no signs of distrust are recorded even a couple of days before the social conflicts, protests can be interpreted as sudden signals sent on a leaders' actions from which citizens extract information on their country fundamentals. |
| Keywords: | Protests, trust, institutions, leaders. |
| JEL: | D74 D83 H41 O17 |
| Date: | 2017–05–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:uobdis:17/682&r=afr |
| By: | Katarzyna Andrzejczak (Poznan University of Economic and Business) |
| Abstract: | Research background: Economic development in sub-Saharan Africa is of para-mount importance, yet it escapes most of the attempts to understand it better in the economic discourse and it remains a sensitive issue in politics, contradicting stake holders on national and international levels. The region still lags behind oth-ers in terms of technological advancement and economic development. It grew significantly in the precedent decade, but the extent of growth has not sufficiently translated to its development. Determining strategies for sub-Saharan Africa is a scientific challenge, which requires more attention. In the globalized, interconnect-ed reality, solving problems of the South is in the best interest of the North. Purpose of the article: The aim of this research is to analyse structural changes as factors of economic development in the best performing sub-Saharan African countries on the grounds of new structural economics in order to provide policy implications. Methodology/methods: Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Gabon were se-lected as best performing economies in the region. Based on the literature review and the analysis of descriptive statistics, profiles of sample countries were set. This in turn allowed to determine potential explanatory variables for OLS model of economic development. In the model, factors relating to labour productivity, tech-nology and structural change were included. The data was sourced from WDI database, Gretl software was used for computations. Findings & Value added: This paper contributes to the literature by attempting to explain structural changes in the process of economic development in the sub-Saharan region on the sample of best performing states. New structural economics concept was applied to understand the problem of. Based on the results, policy implications were proposed with respect to technology promotion, natural re-sources management, and quality of institutions. The research was limited by data availability and reliability. |
| Keywords: | economic development; sub-Saharan Africa; technology development; new structural economics |
| JEL: | O1 O3 O4 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pes:wpaper:2017:no160&r=afr |
| By: | Tweneboah Senzu, Emmanuel |
| Abstract: | The paper seeks to solve the macroeconomic error that emerged from the dispensing of the monetary policy by the Central Banks of Africa. These monetary policies have refused to address the desired economic growth expected by individual developing and underdeveloped countries. It conclusively present a new mathematical model to determine the exact health status of an economy in developing and underdeveloped countries in Africa. |
| Keywords: | Monetary Economics, Monetary Policy, Fiscal Policy, Macroeconomics, Developmental Economics |
| JEL: | E5 E52 E58 |
| Date: | 2015–07–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:79548&r=afr |