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Economic transformation and diversification require solutions that take account of the political economy of reform. This book explores the process of economic transformation, using Senegal as an example. Sound macroeconomic and fiscal policies are prerequisites for achieving this kind of transformation, but these policies need to include the appropriate industrial policies and good economic governance, which provide incentives to help small- and medium-sized enterprises emerge from the informal sector and for foreign direct investment to use the country as a platform for globally competitive production. In many low-income countries extensive rent seeking and patronage have generated stability at the expense of inclusive growth and held back development. Although policymakers know what is needed to address these problems and achieve economic transformation and diversification, how to do it remains a challenge. This book shows how the political economy of reform may be navigated to achieve transformation. For example, the use of special economic zones may solve the problem if good global governance is emphasized, along with linking the zones to the global economy.
Long on the margins of both scholarly and policy concerns, the countries of the West African Sahel have recently attracted world attention, primarily as a key battleground in the global 'war on terror'. This book moves beyond this narrow focus, providing a multidimensional and interdisciplinary assessment of the region in all of its complexity. The focus is on the six countries at the heart of the Sahelian geographic space: Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. Collectively, the chapters explore the commonalities and interconnections that link these countries and their fates, while also underscoring their diversity and the variations in their current realities. The Sahel ...
Les marchés fonciers urbains et périurbains des villes d’Afrique de l’Ouest en expansion rapide opèrent dans des contextes où coexistent des régimes fonciers différents et où les procédures d’accès aux terrains sont complexes. Un cadre d’analyse faisant défaut jusqu’ici, ce livre propose une approche systémique et l'applique à la zone urbaine et périurbaine de Bamako et à son hinterland rural. La méthode repose sur une analyse des différentes filières d’approvisionnement en terres et identifie, depuis la mise en circulation des terres agricoles pour répondre aux besoins en terrains à usage résidentiel, les changements de tenure et types de transactions qui acc...
For a long time, economic research on Africa was not seen as a profitable venture intellectually or professionally-few researchers in top-ranked institutions around the world chose to become experts in the field. This was understandable: the reputation of Africa-centered economic research was not enhanced by the well-known limitations of economic data across the continent. Moreover, development economics itself was not always fashionable, and the broader discipline of economics has had its ups and downs, and has been undergoing a major identity crisis because it failed to predict the Great Recession. Times have changed: many leading researchers-including a few Nobel laureates-have taken the ...
This book highlights the key issues, opportunities and challenges facing African firms, industries, cities and nations in their quest to compete successfully in the global economy. Exploring a topic which has grown in importance as Africa faces a period of subdued economic development, this edited collection takes a unique multi-disciplinary, multi-industry and multi-country approach. The authors provide insights into a broad range of issues, including competitiveness measurement and evaluation, sectoral competitiveness of declining and emerging industries, threats of the ‘Dutch Disease,’ and talent competitiveness. This timely book offers a response to the urgent need for the diversification of economies and the advancement of manufacturing in Africa, appealing to scholars of international business and economics.
The extent of tax compliance has important implications for revenue yield, efficiency and the fairness of any tax system. Tax evasion undermines revenue collection, distorts competition, and undermines a country’s development prospects. In this paper, we investigate whether higher productivity causally leads to lower tax evasion. We first present stylized facts consistent with this view and develop a model that illustrates one potential transmission channel. Second, we test the model predictions at the firm level using the self-reported share of declared income as proxy for tax evasion for a large sample of emerging and developing economies. Our results suggests that productivity improvements by firms can lead to lower tax evasion.
This book brings together new household and enterprise data from 41 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to inform policy makers and practitioners on ways to expand women entrepreneurs’ economic opportunities. Sub-Saharan Africa boasts the highest share of women entrepreneurs, but they are disproportionately concentrated among the self-employed rather than employers. Relative to men, women are pursuing lower opportunity activities, with their enterprises more likely to be smaller, informal, and in low value-added lines of business. The challenge in expanding opportunities is not helping more women become entrepreneurs but enabling them to shift to higher return activities. A central question ad...
Climate—Change is Inevitable is the theme of the twenty-first edition of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. This issue confronts one of humanity’s most consequential challenges head-on in pursuit of a better world. With insights from practitioners, experts, and academics from around the globe, this edition provides a full and robust picture of the intersecting impacts of climate change—from business to security to culture and beyond. The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (GJIA) is the flagship, peer-reviewed academic journal of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. GJIA goes beyond the headlines in identifying and discussing tre...
Roads are the arteries through which the economy pulses. They connect sellers to markets, workers to jobs, students to education, and the sick to hospitals. Yet much of the developing world, Africa in particular, lacks adequate transportation infrastructure. Accordingly investments in transportation remain a cornerstone of the development agenda. Sub-Saharan Africa spends roughly $6.8 billion per year on paving roads, and the World Bank invests more on roads than on education, health, and social services combined. Despite the development focus on transportation, methodologies for evaluating which road projects to fund are often dis-jointed and unreliable. This report hopes to improve upon th...
Although labor is usually the unique asset upon which poor people can make a living, little is known about the functioning of labor markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this volume is to contribute to the building of knowledge in this area. In this book, the authors use a unique set of identical and simultaneous labor force surveys conducted in seven capitals of Western Africa, as well as in some other African countries (Cameroon, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo) in the 2000s. They present innovative and original results on how people are faring in these labour markets, using up-to-date econometric and statistical methods. Because so little is known about labor markets in t...