Country Economic Memorandum

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http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2184

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Pathways to Sustainable Growth in Niger: A World Bank Group Country Economic Memorandum

(Washington, DC, 2022) World Bank

This country economic memorandum aims to support Niger’s efforts to walk on a path conducive to a resilient and sustainable economic growth. It does so by attempting to answer the following five questions, each of which constitutes a separate chapter: (i) what were the salient structural characteristics of Niger’s growth performance in the last 20 years; (ii) what are the margins to accelerate growth in the medium to long term; (iii) how can technology be a vehicle for private sector development; (iv) how can the country’s large natural resource endowments be managed in a transparent way that benefits the whole population; and (v) how can the current disaster management framework be strengthened to increase resilience to natural shocks
Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum: Technical Paper 3. Estimating the Spillover Economic Effects of Foreign Conflict - Evidence from Boko Haram

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-12) Jedwab, Remi ; Blankespoor, Brian ; Masaki, Takaaki ; Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos

Violent conflicts present a formidable threat to regional economies. Throughout the world, border regions in many countries are possibly impacted by the cross-border economic effects of regional insurgencies in neighboring countries or national state failures, i.e. "bad neighbors". This raises two questions. First, what is the magnitude of the spill-over economic effects of foreign conflict and what are the channels through which they operate Second, what policies can governments adopt in the potentially exposed regions to mitigate such spill-over effects. In this paper, we adopt a difference-in-difference (DiD) framework leveraging the unexpected rise of the Boko Haram insurgency in Northeastern Nigeria in 2009 to study its economic effects in neighboring areas in Cameroon, Chad and Niger that were not directly targeted by Boko Haram activities. We find strong cross-border economic effects that are likely driven by reduced trade activities, not the diffusion of conflict. Factors of local economic resilience to this foreign conflict shock then include trade diversification and political and economic securitization. More generally, conflicts, if they have regional economic effects, may necessitate regional responses.
Ghana Rising: Accelerating Economic Transformation and Creating Jobs

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-10) World Bank

Ghana has been a rising growth star and a beacon of hope in West Africa. Strong economic growth over the past two decades led to a near doubling of GDP per capita, lifting the country through the threshold for middle-income status in 2011. GDP per capita grew by an average of 3 percent per year over the past two decades, putting Ghana in the top ten fastest growing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A rising tide has tended to lift all boats. Poverty rates more than halved between 1998 and 2016, and the extreme poverty rate declined from 36.0 percent in 1991 to 8.2 percent in 2016. The net primary school enrollment rate rose from 62.5 percent in 2000 to 86.0 percent in 2019. This progress has motivated the government’s goal to lift the country to high-income status by 2057. The focus of this Country Economic Memorandum (CEM) is to review options for Ghana to create enough higher quality jobs through economic transformation. Economic transformation, or inclusive productivity growth, occurs as people and resources shift from lower to higher productivity activities. It raises household incomes and living standards, thereby lifting people out of poverty. It can be achieved through the movement of workers and other resources between firms and sectors, or through workers staying within existing firms that benefit from within-firm productivity growth by adopting better technologies and capabilities.
Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum: Technical Paper 1. Socioeconomic Trends in the Lake Chad Region

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-09) Masaki, Takaaki ; Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos

The Lake Chad region, which is an economically-and socially integrated area spanning across four countries of Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria in north-west Africa, has been trapped in a vicious circle of suboptimal territorial development and fragility. This note shows that the Lake Chad region lags in multiple dimensions of development ranging from poverty, human capital, and access to services. A poverty rate in the Lake Chad region is found to be much higher than other parts of the countries surrounding the lake. The regional poverty rate in the Extreme North region of Cameroon (59 percent) is three times higher that of the rest of the country (19 percent). In Nigeria, the Lake Chad region203 has a poverty rate (72 percent) nearly twice as high as in the rest of the country (38 percent). Chad is the only exception, where the poverty rate in the country’s Lake Chad region (31 percent) is lower than the rest of the country (40 percent).204 This is explained by the fact that the Chad region around the lake lies near the capital of the country, with a consequently higher urbanization rate and a relatively high population density. The note is organized as follows. Section 2.2 provides key statistics on poverty, sector of work, and human capital indicators in the Lake Chad region vis-à-vis other parts of the country and examine how the Lake Chad lags behind in different dimensions. Section 2.3 provides a diagnostic of economic geography with a focus on three dimensions of density, distance and division. Section 2.4 identifies a set of structural factors, aggregate shocks and selected policies that might be associated with the dynamics of economic activity and social inclusion across the region.
Côte d’Ivoire - Country Economic Memorandum: Sustaining the Growth Acceleration

(Washington, DC, 2021-04) World Bank

The Ivorian economy needs to sustain its growth momentum. During the last decade, Côte d’Ivoire’s growth performance has been impressive. To achieve its ambitious goal of reaching emerging market status within one or two generations, however, it needs to maintain the strong growth for many years to come. Fewer than 15 countries have managed to sustain high growth for over 25 years in the postwar period, and their experience has shown that increasing productivity is at the heart of it. To follow in their footsteps, Ivorian growth also needs to be more inclusive and reduce structural imbalances, including the gap between the economic capital, Abidjan, and the rest of the country. This report addresses this question.