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on Africa |
| By: | Kohnert, Dirk |
| Abstract: | Famines are almost always man-made often used as a deterrent. Since ancient times, food and hunger have been a weapon of war. Among the most notorious examples in Africa are the Herero and Namaqua genocide in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) from 1904 to 1908. It was the first genocide of the 20th century. Also, the subsequent famines in Biafra (South-East Nigeria, 1967-1969), when an estimated 1.5 million people starved to death, the 1980 famine in Uganda, one of the worst in African history, when 21% of the population died, and the recurring famines in Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan since the 1990s have been burned into human memory. The use of food as a weapon was condemned as a war crime by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998. Since most African countries are Least Developed Countries (LLCs), they will suffer the hardest in the aftermath of Putin's war in Ukraine, especially Africa's poor. They have already suffered the consequences of drought, the corona pandemic and Islamist terrorism. Their already weakened position will be exacerbated by the spill-over effects of Russian aggression in Ukraine, which will further exacerbate hunger and poverty in Africa. All the more so as international development aid to Africa is likely to suffer from a massive redirection of aid to rearmament. Last but not least, Putin's war in Ukraine will have a major impact on EU-Africa relations. In view of the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for Africa, it will further damage the mutual trust between both partners. About 86% of Africans have yet to receive two doses of vaccine. A growing number of African heads of state and government no longer see Western countries as reliable partners. |
| Keywords: | : Russia, invasion, Ukraine, Africa, famine, international trade, global power, food power, arms deals, fragile state, Islamist terrorism, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, South Africa, Cameroon, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Namibia, Nigeria, Sudan, energy security, China, EU, USA |
| JEL: | E26 E31 F02 F13 F35 F51 F54 H56 N47 N57 N77 P26 Z13 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:112751&r= |
| By: | Park, Young Ho (KOREA INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY (KIEP)); Kang, Munsu (KOREA INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY (KIEP)); Kim, Yejin Anna (KOREA INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY (KIEP)); Park, Kyu Tae (KOREA INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY (KIEP)); Choi, Young-Chool (Chungbuk National University) |
| Abstract: | One of the main changes in Korea’s foreign affairs in recent years is the expansion of official development assistance (ODA), among which Africa is showing particularly rapid growth. Korea’s ODA to Africa accounted for 15% of its total ODA budget in 2010, and rose to 25% in 2019 as Korea emphasized its role in international development. Korea ranks 11th in terms of the cumulative size of ODA to the African healthcare sector between 2011–2019, totaling 674 million USD. As Korea’s expansion of ODA and solidarity in international development aid to respond to COVID-19 are related, the expansion of ODA in the African healthcare sector is anticipated to continue. This study analyzes features of the healthcare sector in Africa in an effort to suggest various plans for development cooperation, based on an evaluation of Korea’s ODA project design to enable the effective provision of ODA. |
| Keywords: | Healthcare; Africa; Korea; ODA; Policy |
| Date: | 2022–03–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:kiepwe:2022_011&r= |
| By: | KOLOMA, YAYA |
| Abstract: | Since 2012, Mali has been in crisis, with significant socioeconomic damages over the past nine years. Despite several efforts by national, regional, and international partners, violence is on the rise and spreading, institutions are dysfunctional, and the military remains inefficient, leading to questions about whether Mali has become ungovernable and when the crisis will end. Following the African Development Bank conception of fragility analysis, this paper aims to expose some of the root causes of Mali's fragility and to recommend a few actions to address them. We conduct an in-depth literature review by emphasizing five main dimensions, such as political and institutional, economic, social, and climate-environmental, and geopolitical and geostrategic considered key drivers of fragility. It is clear that one of the main causes of Mali's fragility is the poor performance of institutions and therefore of governance. The spread of the insecurity from the North to the Central region of the country is making the crisis more complex. Particularly, its ramification into inter-communities’ conflicts challenge the way to address the whole crisis. Possible solutions may include reorganizing military institutions, strategies, and services, establishing more equitable and well-distributed justice, engaging in dialogue with various communities, including armed and jihadist groups, implementing integrative, conflict-sensitive, and climate-sensitive development projects and programs, strengthening the economy based on the policy of developing regional competitiveness clusters, and finding a better balance between various and conflicting geopolitical interests. |
| Keywords: | Fragility, Insecurity, Terrorism, Poverty, Competition, Geopolitics, Climate change, Mali |
| JEL: | F51 H41 Q34 Z13 Z18 |
| Date: | 2022–04–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:112821&r= |
| By: | James Dzansi; Anders Jensen; David Lagakos; Henry Telli |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the role of technology in local-government tax collection capacity in the developing world. We first conduct a new census of all local governments in Ghana to document a strong association between technology use and property tax billing, collection and enforcement. We then randomize the use of a new revenue collection technology within one large municipal government. Revenue collectors using the new technology delivered 27 percent more bills and collected 103 percent more tax revenues than control collectors. Collectors using the new technology learned faster about which households in their assigned areas were willing and able to make payments. We reconcile these experimental findings in a simple Beckerian time-use model in which technology allows revenue collectors to better allocate their time towards households that are the most likely to comply with taxpaying duties. The model's predictions are consistent with experimental evidence showing that treatment collectors are more likely to target households with greater liquidity, income, awareness of taxpaying duties, and satisfaction with local public goods provision. |
| JEL: | H2 H71 O12 O33 |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29923&r= |
| By: | Rafael Aguirre Unceta (IPC-IG) |
| Keywords: | Zambia; natural resources; taxation; public finances; development policies |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipc:opager:475&r= |
| By: | Jackson, Emerson Abraham |
| Abstract: | The article provides an opportunity for critical discourses geared towards the modernisation of education in Sierra Leone to confront the realities of digital transformation in the 21st century. The purpose of the study is carved towards the achievement of addressing three objectives, which include the assessment of technology provision and gaps in the country, and proffering recommendations geared towards edging the country’s hope of making realistic growth prospects that are comparable to its counterparts in the Sub-Saharan African region. The methodology incorporates discursive analysis of existing technologies that will enable the country to make the right level of progress towards facilitating growth and development. The result unearthed gaps in provision, which is not so much about casting blame, but the need to ensure resources are pulled to address the scope for economic progression across all sectors, while at the same time adding value to the human resource skillset. The conclusion shows that resources should be pulled to make sure the system is ready to leap in a bid to embrace advances in technology modernisation needed to achieve a sustained level of growth in the economy. |
| Keywords: | Digital Space, Modernising Educational System, Innovation, Sierra Leone |
| JEL: | O30 O33 |
| Date: | 2022–01–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:112807&r= |
| By: | Büttner, Nicolas |
| Abstract: | The relationship between inequality and crime has been of long-standing interest to social scientists of various disciplines. While theorical work from both economics and sociology postulates a positive link between the two, the empirical evidence is rather inconclusive and typically focuses on higher-income countries. In this study, I investigate the relationship between socio-economic inequalities of various dimensions and both violent and property crime at the local level in South Africa. For this, I created a novel panel dataset of police precincts that combines official crime records from the South African Police Service with socio-economic data from two population censuses and household surveys. For identification, I exploit the variation of inequality and crime across time and space, while controlling for socio-economic and demographic characteristics of police precincts, provincespecific time trends, police cluster-fixed effects, and the spatial correlation of crime. I find strong and robust evidence for a significant, positive and linear relationship between income inequality within police precincts and local rates of violent crime and an inverted u-shaped relationship with property crime. Education inequality is more strongly related to violent crime, while housing inequality is only associated with property crime. In turn, cultural heterogeneity is positively correlated with all analyzed crimes. I also find suggestive evidence that inter-racial inequality contributes more to property crime, while intra-racial inequality contributes more to violent crime. Lastly, the results indicate that precincts which are relatively rich as compared to their neighbors suffer from higher rates of vehicle theft and aggravated robbery. |
| Keywords: | Crime,Local inequality,Small Area Estimation,South Africa |
| JEL: | D31 D74 O12 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:upadvr:v8922&r= |