The ambivalent impact of commodities: Structural change or status quo in Sub-Saharan Africa?

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice N. Sindzingre
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan

Agricultural Neglect and Retarded Structural Change in Sub-Saharan Africa

2018 ◽  
pp. 119-145
Author(s):  
Richard M. Auty ◽  
Haydn I. Furlonge
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Small Farmers ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Policy Failure ◽  
Potential Development ◽  
Farm Model ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Sound Policy

Sub-Saharan Africa has followed a singular pattern of structural change that lags global trends and traps a large proportion of the workforce in low-productivity agriculture through a process of agricultural involution. This chapter focuses on the small land-rich crop-driven economies, which comprised the vast majority of sub-Saharan countries at independence. Baldwin’s yeoman farm model suggests that the diffuse linkages of such economies are advantageous for development, but his model neglects the need for resilient institutions and sound policy, which most countries lacked. The elite in sub-Saharan Africa abused crop marketing boards to extract rents from small farmers, converting the linkages from favourably diffuse to concentrated and theft-prone. Most economies traced staple trap trajectories and experienced growth collapses that, contrary to staple trap theory, failed to motivate the elite to promote diversified economic growth, with the exception of Mauritius. This chapter traces this policy failure to the prioritization of industrialization and associated persistent neglect of the potential development stimulus of agriculture.

Coloniality in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jurgen Poesche
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
The Status ◽  
Sub Saharan

The objective of this article is to contribute to the development of a common narrative on coloniality in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. Since scholars tend to focus on either Sub-Saharan Africa or the Americas, a gap between these important regions has emerged in the literature on coloniality. This article seeks to bridge this gap by providing a comparative perspective on coloniality, and this hopefully will enhance Indigenous African nations’ and Indigenous American nations’ understanding of what needs to be done to overcome coloniality. The article explores three key theses. First, in spite of the differences in the extant societal power structures in the postcolonial African states and the former settler colonial states in the Americas, this article argues that the continued dynamics of coloniality are similar in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. The minority status of Indigenous American nations throughout the Americas renders addressing coloniality more challenging than in Sub-Saharan Africa where Indigenous African nations are in the majority although they generally do not have effective sovereignty. Second, the extant societal power structures associated with both coloniality and occidental modernity have weaponized occidental jurisprudence, natural science and social science to defend and proliferate the status quo assisted by state sovereignty. Addressing coloniality effectively therefore requires a renaissance of Indigenous African and Indigenous American cosmovisions unaffected by modernity. Third, addressing coloniality in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas requires the recognition of the comprehensive and supreme sovereignty of the Indigenous African nations in all of Sub-Saharan Africa, and Indigenous American nations in all of the Americas.

scholarly journals Status quo of chemical weed control in rice in sub-Saharan Africa

Food Security ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonne Rodenburg ◽  
Jean-Martial Johnson ◽  
Ibnou Dieng ◽  
Kalimuthu Senthilkumar ◽  
Elke Vandamme ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Weed Control ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan

Playing by the rules? New institutionalism, path dependency and informal settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (11) ◽  
pp. 2558-2577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicky Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Informal Settlement ◽  
New Institutionalism ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Path Dependency ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Status ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Way

The scale of contemporary urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa has culminated in the proliferation of informal settlements, with governments claiming a legitimate right to remove them. Drawing on new institutionalism as a conceptual framework and presenting the case of Old Fadama, an informal settlement within central Accra in Ghana, this paper sheds light on the way in which both formal and informal rules shape these legally unauthorized spaces. Using the analogy of a game, the author devises a novel typology to highlight the way in which different players maximize their personal advantage from maintaining the status quo. The paper concludes that as long as different interests are served by the existing socio-political arrangements then path dependency will endure, with government officials as the dominant playmaker in the locality ultimately controlling the rules and pace of the game.

The Rent Curse

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M Auty ◽  
Haydn I Furlonge
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Development Policy ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Dutch Disease ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Urban Sector ◽  
Relative Prices ◽  
High Rent ◽  
Sub Saharan

This book analyses the political economy of economic development using two stylized facts models of rent-driven growth. The models show that: (i) the resource curse is a variant of a wider rent curse that can be driven by geopolitical rent (foreign aid), labour rent (worker remittances), or regulatory rent (government manipulation of relative prices); (ii) the rent curse is caused by policy failure and is avoidable; (iii) the global incidence of the rent curse varies over time, which reflects development policy fashions; and (iv) the intensity of the rent curse also varies with rent linkages. Rent cycling theory posits that low rent incentivizes the elite to grow the economy to become wealthy, whereas high rent encourages siphoning rent for immediate enrichment at the expense of sustainable and diversified economic growth. The contrasting incentives trigger divergent policies and structural change. Low rent motivates the efficient allocation of inputs in line with the economy’s comparative advantage in labour-intensive exports, which drives: structural change; rapid egalitarian economic growth; and incremental democratization. High rent, however, elicits contests to capture rent for immediate enrichment so the economy absorbs rent too quickly. The economy experiences Dutch disease effects that expand a subsidized urban sector whose rent demands outstrip supply, resulting in a staple trap and a protracted growth collapse. The economy fails to diversify competitively and depends for growth on expanding rent rather than on competitive diversification that boosts productivity. The book uses the models to explain why many developing countries in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Gulf followed a staple trap trajectory and draws on East Asia and South Asia for reform.

Structural change, employment and education in four countries in Sub-Saharan Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-185
Author(s):  
Theo Sparreboom
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Return To Education ◽  
National Accounts ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Rates Of Return ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Sub Saharan

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between advances in educational attainment on the one hand, and structural change in employment on the other, in four countries in Sub-Saharan Africa for selected periods. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on a decomposition of changes in education intensity, which is complemented by an analysis of rates of return to education. For all countries the analysis is based on labour market microdata from nationally representative household surveys, and on economic data from national accounts. Findings It is demonstrated that if countries want to exploit structural change, levels of education need to rise. Low levels of education explain why the increase in educational attainment in Tanzania was barely sufficient to keep up with structural change in this country, and Mozambique would have been in the same situation if structural change would have occurred. In Ghana and Namibia, levels of educational attainment are much higher, and the paper demonstrates how education was used differently to accommodate structural change in these countries. Rates of return to education in all four countries appear consistent with patterns of education intensity. Research limitations/implications The analysis demonstrates that labour market monitoring should not be limited to (broad) sectoral aggregates. The analysis of more detailed breakdowns of employment is needed to gain insights into economies and labour markets of countries, including with regard to the role of education. Originality/value The paper is original in that an identical methodology is used in four African countries to decompose changes in education intensity, to relate these changes to employment patterns and to calculate rates of return to education. Although such work has been undertaken in individual countries, it is rarely done in a comparative way.

scholarly journals Dimensions of African Inequality

2014 ◽  
pp. 196-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arne Bigsten
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
Independence Era ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses dimensions of inequality in sub-Saharan Africa and their causes. It starts with a review of the empirical evidence about inequality during the colonial period as well as the post-independence era. Then it discusses the forces that determine inequality change, focusing on factor accumulation and structural change. Next it considers the relationship between inequality and growth, the role of agriculture in the development process, the relationships between ethnicity and social stratification and governance, and external influences on inequality. The chapter concludes with some comments on what policy interventions can do to reduce inequality.

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