Person: Dabalen, Andrew
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The Changing Landscape of Africa’s Growth
This paper examines the main features of real growth per capita of Sub-Saharan Africa over the past six decades, before uncovering the sources of growth—including those of growth miracles. Three distinct growth phases before the recent “lost decade” are observed. The swinging pattern of income per capita shows that the region has not converged with most benchmarks and is not resilient to shocks, although resilience has improved since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Furthermore, growth across countries in the region is heterogeneous and falls into three broad groups. Analysis of the sources of growth suggests that the region underperforms on duration during episodes of expansions/recessions, and the contribution of total factor productivity remains small, although it has improved over the past two decades. A few countries in the region, for example, Botswana, Ethiopia, and Mauritius, have sustained growth for decades, on par with the world’s best performance. These exceptional “growth miracles” are distinguished by a common set of factors that explain how such miracles start and are sustained: leadership, economic diversification, market expansion, and investment for the future.
Regenerative Agriculture in Practice: A Review
Regenerative agriculture, a farming approach that focuses on soil health and ecosystems, has recently received considerable attention, particularly as an essential element of sustainable agriculture in the context of climate change. This paper reviews quantitative evidence of regenerative agriculture’s impact on productivity, resilience, and climate change mitigation—through carbon sequestration in soil. The effectiveness of regenerative agriculture depends on local climate conditions and existing practices. In addition, large-scale adoption of regenerative agriculture faces multiple challenges, such as the trade-off between short-term loss and long-term gains, smallholder farmer profitability, and other common market failures in agriculture. These challenges are especially salient in African agriculture. However, payments for ecosystem services, though yet to be carefully designed, can potentially incentivize farmers to adopt regenerative agriculture and create an additional source of income. Finally, further empirical evidence on the causal impacts of regenerative agriculture is needed to support policy design and recommendations. The paper concludes with open questions on regenerative agriculture for future study.
Local Economic Shocks and Human Capital Accumulation: Evidence from Rwandan Coffee Mills
This paper examines the medium-term effects of policy- driven income shocks on human capital accumulation in low-income environments. Using administrative data on test scores of the universe of primary school students in Rwanda and the staggered rollout of coffee mills in the country, it shows a positive spillover effect of the coffee mills on students’ performance. Early life exposure to coffee mills is associated with a 0.09 standard deviation (4 percent) increase in student test scores. Improvements in household welfare, child health, and school attendance are likely operative channels of impact.
Agriculture Production Potential of Groundwater Irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa’s low agricultural productivity exacerbates rural poverty. An important investment, the sustainable use of groundwater for irrigation, has the potential to increase agricultural productivity, but the region has been much slower to adopt this irrigation method compared to other regions, despite abundant reserves. This study uses a simulation-driven approach to examine the benefits of sustainably utilizing groundwater for irrigation. By mapping data from 291,798 global agro-ecological zones to 8,099 groundwater grids, the study models the production gains from groundwater irrigation for rain-fed croplands. Simulation results indicate that groundwater access could increase output by 27.97 to 129.42 percent, contingent on crop and model conditions. This research facilitates the assessment of the transformative potential of groundwater irrigation and identifies areas in Sub-Saharan Africa where investments can yield significant returns without depleting the groundwater table.
Mining in Africa: Are Local Communities Better Off?
This study focuses on the local and regional impact of large-scale gold mining in Africa in the context of a mineral boom in the region since 2000. It contributes to filling a gap in the literature on the welfare effects of mineral resources, which, until now, has concentrated more on the national or macroeconomic impacts. Economists have long been intrigued by the paradox that a rich endowment of natural resources may retard economic performance, particularly in the case of mineral-exporting developing countries. Studies of this phenomenon, known as the “resource curse,” examine the economy-wide consequences of mineral exports. Africa’s resource boom has lifted growth, but has been less successful in improving people’s welfare. Yet much of the focus in academic and policy circles has been on appropriate management of the macro-fiscal and governance risks that have historically undermined development outcomes. This study focuses instead on the fortune of local communities where resources are located. It aims to better inform public policy and corporate behavior on the welfare of communities in Africa in which the extraction of resources takes place.
Agricultural Windfalls and Electrification
This paper studies how windfalls from agriculture influence demand for electrification in a developing country. Leveraging two decades of administrative data on the universe of electricity grid customers in Rwanda, and plausibly exogenous variations in international coffee prices, we document two key findings: (I) Historical coffee price booms explain about 4% of the increase in electrification rates in Rwanda. (II) Coffee price shocks are also associated with an increase in electricity consumption by connected households. Relaxing liquidity constraints associated with upfront payment of connection fees and increased demand for electrical appliances are likely mechanisms.
Mobile Phone Panel Surveys in Developing Countries: A Practical Guide for Microdata Collection
Household survey data are very useful for monitoring living conditions of citizens of any country. In developing countries, a lot of this data are collected through “traditional” face-to-face household surveys. Due to the remote and dispersed nature of many populations in developing countries, but also because of the complex nature of many survey questionnaires, collection of timely welfare data has often proved expensive and logistically challenging. Yet, there is a need for faster, cheaper to collect, lighter, more nimble data collection methods to address data gaps between big household surveys. The recent proliferation of mobile phone networks has opened new possibilities. By combining baseline data from a traditional household survey with subsequent interviews of selected respondents using mobile phones, this facilitates welfare monitoring and opinion polling almost real time. The purpose of this handbook is to contribute to the development of the new field of mobile phone data collection in developing countries. The handbook documents how this innovative approach to data collection works, its advantages and challenges. The handbook draws primarily from the authors’ first-hand experiences with mobile phone surveys in Africa and also benefits from experiences elsewhere. It is intended to serve a diverse audience including those involved in collecting (representative) data using mobile phones, and those using data collected through this approach. For those who will be implementing a mobile phone panel survey, the different chapters guide them through every stage of the implementation process. For potential users of the data collected via mobile phone technology, the handbook presents a new approach to data collection which they can use for monitoring programs and facilitate almost real time decision-making. A further purpose of this book is to contribute to the debate regarding the advantages of the method as well as the challenges associated with it.
Poverty in a Rising Africa
Perceptions of Africa have changed dramatically. Viewed as a continent of wars, famines and entrenched poverty in the late 1990s, there is now a focus on “Africa rising” and an “African 21st century.” Two decades of unprecedented economic growth in Africa should have brought substantial improvements in well-being. Whether or not they did, remains unclear given the poor quality of the data, the nature of the growth process (especially the role of natural resources), conflicts that affect part of the region, and high population growth. Poverty in a Rising Africa documents the data challenges and systematically reviews the evidence on poverty from monetary and nonmonetary perspectives, as well as a focus on dimensions of inequality. Chapter 1 maps out the availability and quality of the data needed to track monetary poverty, reflects on the governance and political processes that underpin the current situation with respect to data production, and describes some approaches to addressing the data gaps. Chapter 2 evaluates the robustness of the estimates of poverty in Africa. It concludes that poverty reduction in Africa may be slightly greater than traditional estimates suggest, although even the most optimistic estimates of poverty reduction imply that more people lived in poverty in 2012 than in 1990. A broad-stroke profile of poverty and trends in poverty in the region is presented. Chapter 3 broadens the view of poverty by considering nonmonetary dimensions of well-being, such as education, health, and freedom, using Sen's (1985) capabilities and functioning approach. While progress has been made in a number of these areas, levels remain stubbornly low. Chapter 4 reviews the evidence on inequality in Africa. It looks not only at patterns of monetary inequality in Africa but also other dimensions, including inequality of opportunity, intergenerational mobility in occupation and education, and extreme wealth in Africa.
A Global Count of the Extreme Poor in 2012: Data Issues, Methodology and Initial Results
The 2014 release of a new set of purchasing power parity conversion factors (PPPs) for 2011 has prompted a revision of the international poverty line. In order to preserve the integrity of the goalposts for international targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the World Bank’s twin goals, the new poverty line was chosen so as to preserve the definition and real purchasing power of the earlier $1.25 line (in 2005 PPPs) in poor countries. Using the new 2011 PPPs, the new line equals $1.90 per person per day. The higher value of the line in US dollars reflects the fact that the new PPPs yield a relatively lower purchasing power of that currency vis-à-vis those of most poor countries. Because the line was designed to preserve real purchasing power in poor countries, the revisions lead to relatively small changes in global poverty incidence: from 14.5 percent in the old method to 14.1 percent in the new method for 2011. In 2012, the new reference year for the global count, we find 12.7 percent of the world’s population, or 897 million people, are living in extreme poverty. There are changes in the regional composition of poverty, but they are also relatively small. This paper documents the detailed methodological decisions taken in the process of updating both the poverty line and the consumption and income distributions at the country level, including issues of inter-temporal and spatial price adjustments. It also describes various caveats, limitations, perils and pitfalls of the approach taken.
Pathways to Prosperity in Rural Malawi
By most accounts, rural Malawi has lacked dynamism in the past decade. Growth has been mostly volatile, in large part due to unstable macroeconomic fundamentals evidenced by high inflation, fiscal deficits, and interest rates. When rapid economic growth has materialized, the gains have not always reached the poorest. Poverty remains high and the rural poor face significant challenges in consistently securing enough food. Several factors contribute to stubbornly high rural poverty. They include a low-productivity and non-diversified agriculture, macroeconomic and recurrent climatic shocks, limited non-farm opportunities and low returns to such activities, especially for the poor, and poor performance from some of the prominent safety net programs. The Report proposes complementary policy actions that offer a possible path for a more dynamic and prosperous rural economy. The key pillars of this comprise macroeconomic stability, increased productivity in agriculture, faster urbanization, better functioning safety nets, and more inclusive financial markets. Some recommendations call for a reorientation of existing programs such as the Malawi Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP) and the Malawi Social Action Fund Public Works Program (MASAF-PWP). Others identify promising new areas of intervention, such as the introduction of digital IDs and biometric technologies to enhance the reach of mobile banking and deepen financial inclusion. Finally, and importantly, the report recommends the scaling up of investments on girls’ secondary education to curb early child marriage and early child bearing among adolescents. This will empower women at home and work and bend the trajectory of fertility rates in rural areas in order to boost human development and reduce poverty.