Publication: Africa's Pulse, No. 31, Spring 2025: Improving Governance and Delivering for People in Africa
Loading...
Files in English
3,029 downloads
Date
2025-04-23
ISSN
Published
2025-04-23
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Amid global economic uncertainty and limited fiscal space in the region, Sub-Saharan Africa's economic activity is showing some resilience, with projected growth gradually increasing over 2025-2027 period. This growth is driven primarily by a rise in private demand, alongside a reduction in inflation rates and stable currencies. However, growth has been unable to reduce poverty and meet people's aspirations. The region is also grappling with persistent challenges, including political unrest and escalating demands for adequate economic opportunities, as reflected in a surge in protests over the past decade and a notable rise in coups since 2000.
These dynamics highlight the urgent need for a renewed social contract between governments and citizens, emphasizing efficient public spending, better governance, and transparent market regulations to foster job creation and sustainable economic growth. African governments must prioritize governance reforms to maintain growth momentum and restore public trust. The report underscores the importance of strategic investments and complementary policies that bolster human capital, improve public services, and create a fair tax system, thereby fostering a business environment that supports growth and job creation.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2025. Africa's Pulse, No. 31, Spring 2025: Improving Governance and Delivering for People in Africa. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42886 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Levelling the Field : Improving Opportunities for Women Farmers in Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-03-18)There is a growing recognition of agriculture's potential to spur growth and reduce poverty in Africa. Agriculture accounts for one-third of the continent's gross domestic product (GDP), and two-thirds of its citizens rely on the sector for their incomes. Investments in agriculture will hence not only improve productivity and the continent's ability to feed a growing population, but will also lift families out of poverty. Over 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa's extreme poor are engaged in agriculture, and growth originating in the sector is 2-4 times more effective at directly reducing poverty than growth originating in other sectors. Yet agriculture in Africa has not fulfilled its potential, suffering from a lack of investment and insufficient attention from policy-makers. A key hindrance to agricultural development and broader growth is a wide and pervasive gender gap in agricultural productivity. Women comprise nearly half of the labor force in Africa's agriculture sector, and more than half in several countries, but on the whole they produce less per hectare than men. Existing evidence from small-scale studies across the continent documents the numerous disadvantages that women face in accessing the same resources, training, markets and opportunities as men. They also face ingrained norms and institutional barriers that further widen the gap. Tackling the barriers that hold back the productivity of female farmers could both enhance gender equality and usher in broader economic growth. The African Union has declared 2014 to be the 'year of agriculture and food security', bringing much needed attention to the sector's potential to transform the continent. This is an opportunity not only to revitalize the agriculture sector, but to rally African governments and development organizations to commit to concrete policy action to redress the inequalities within the sector, and in so doing to reap greater rewards from future investments.Publication Facilitating Cross-Border Trade between the DRC and Neighbors in the Great Lakes Region of Africa : Improving Conditions for Poor Traders(World Bank, 2011-06-01)This report looks at the current situation and opportunities for cross-border trade between Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and neighbors with a focus on agricultural products. It recognizes that much of current trade across these borders is informal and carried by individual traders, most of whom are poor women. The report shows that it is very important that informality not be equated with illegality. The large numbers of traders that cross the border every day do so through official border crossings. The aim of the report is to provide information on the current state and the potential for cross border trade between the DRC and Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, to document the conditions and problems that traders face in crossing the borders and provide suggestions to policy makers on the priorities for trade facilitating measures at the border. Exploiting the potential for cross-border trade will be an important element of growth and poverty reduction in the region and a key mechanism for enhancing stability. Comparing prices for food products in a range of markets in the three countries, the report underlines the strong role that cross-border trade could play in reducing differences in price levels and price volatility of agricultural products. The report proceeds by describing the current economic situation in the Great Lakes region and then provides a brief summary of a detailed analysis of relative prices of a number of basic food products in markets in Burundi, DRC and Rwanda and what this implies for the width of the borders in the region. The next section then summarizes the results from the survey of cross-border traders which is followed by a set of recommendations. The final section concludes and describes a number of steps that are being taken to address the constraints identified in this report and discusses ways in which these may be built upon.Publication Poor Places, Thriving People : How the Middle East and North Africa Can Rise Above Spatial Disparities(World Bank, 2011-01-10)The main messages of poor places, thriving people: how the Middle East and North Africa can rise above spatial disparities can be summarized in four words: people, connections, clusters, and institutions. This report shows how smart investments and policies in transport can connect poor places to the dynamic economies of their rich neighbors. There is also a wide open field of opportunity for telecommunications to bring electronic proximity to lagging areas. Many countries have spent huge sums on subsidies to entice investors to lagging areas-usually without any sustainable impact. This report recommends that governments turn their efforts toward the new approach to local economic development, which is gaining ground around the world, and is based on economic clusters, local competitive advantage, private initiative, and public-private dialogue. The report describes the state-of-play in territorial planning, public financial management, targeted programs, deconcentration, and decentralization, and it sketches some emerging lessons. This report combines the insights of specialists in the majority of the World Bank's key sectors: agriculture, development economics, education, health, poverty analysis, social protection, and transport. It is the report's modest aim, if not to offer a single formula for reducing spatial disparities, at least to propose a range of policy options that the region's leaders can reflect on in the light of their national objectives.Publication Transport Governance Indicators in Sub-Saharan Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)Good governance-or the absence of it-has concerned policy makers and other stakeholders in the transport sector for decades. Most stakeholders recognize that effective governance is crucial if improvements in transport infrastructure are to endure and contribute to sustainable economic growth. In Africa, billions of dollars have been spent on improving and rehabilitating transport infrastructure, but it has been long recognized that the poor performance of the transport sector is due to far more than merely inadequate finance or technical capacity constraints. Poor governance occurs at many levels of the policy cycle-from the ways in which legislation is drafted and regulations, systems, and procedures are worded and applied in practice, to how services are eventually delivered to the users of transport and whether their expectations are met. This paper sets out to identify a critical subset of governance indicators in the transport sector that can be used to demonstrate in a clear, measurable way the quality of governance in a particular country, sector, or subsector. By means of consultation with key transport sector stakeholders, it examines transport sector governance issues in four pilot countries in order to determine whether there is a consensus on what transport sector governance means in practice; why it matters; how it can be measured; and in what priority ways improvements in governance might make a real difference in the sector and its contribution to national development. At its core, the study attempts to reduce the indicator set to what is at the heart of the governance matter.Publication Rail Transport : Framework for Improving Railway Sector Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-03)In most of the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries railways have played, throughout history, a key part in the economic development maintaining a dominant role in transporting freight and passengers at low costs. During the last 50 years, the road transport in the region as throughout the world has expanded rapidly due to the aggressive development of the automobile industry. African governments have invested mainly in road infrastructure improvement, neglecting railways. The liberalization in road transport and the slow response of railways to adapt to the new market conditions resulted in dramatic traffic decline in rail transport. By 1990 most of the Sub-Saharan African railways were in virtual bankruptcy, requiring permanent cash injection and large investments in infrastructure and rolling stock. To address the crisis, many governments have considered concessions as a solution, and between the mid-1990s and 2010 most of the railways were concessioned. Currently, more than 70 percent of the rail transport activities in the region (excluding South Africa) are managed by private operators. The World Bank Group (IDA and IFC) has supported most concession processes through grants and loans, investing since 1996 more than one billion dollars to support the efforts of the governments and private operators. The recommendations suggested in the present document are based on a comprehensive approach for improving the performance of the railway sector in parallel with the enhancement of the governance of the transport sector. The rhythm of implementation of such a complex set of recommendations may vary from country to country depending on local conditions and will require, in any case, a long period of time. Nevertheless, the dramatic status of the railway transport sector in SSA requires rapid actions. In this respect, the present work includes a selected list of most urgent recommendations to be implemented in the first stage. The way ahead for improving the performance of railways in Sub-Saharan Africa is a complex endeavor that cannot be achieved without the strong involvement of the private sector.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication Greater Heights(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-12)Twenty-seven countries have reached high-income status since 1990. Ten of these are in the Europe and Central Asia region and have joined the European Union. Another 20 in the region have become more prosperous since the 1990s. However, their transition to high-income status has been delayed. These middle-income countries have found that the prospects for growth to high-income status have become even more difficult since the 2007–09 global financial crisis. This reflects partly a slowdown in structural reforms at home and partly the challenges associated with a deterioration in the global environment. The concern has emerged that many countries in the region may be caught in the middle-income trap, a phase in development characterized by a recurring deceleration in growth and by per capita incomes that are systematically below the high-income threshold. To ensure that these countries overcome the obstacles to growth and achieve progress toward high-income status, policy makers need to make the transition from a strategy driven largely by investment to a strategy that is supported by the importation and diffusion of global capital, knowledge, and technology and then to a strategy that complements these with innovation. The report Greater Heights: Growing to High Income in Europe and Central Asia relies on the 3i strategy described in World Development Report 2024—investment, infusion, and innovation—to propose policy options to assist middle-income countries in Europe and Central Asia in the effort to reach high-income status. Drawing on comprehensive empirical analysis, the report offers actionable recommendations that will enable policy makers to advance stronger economic growth across the region. Such a transition will require continued and sustained foundational reform to maximize the drivers of economic growth while pivoting to new transformative reforms to promote the development of more complex economic structures and institutions. These involve the need to discipline incumbents, boost the role of the private sector, strengthen the competitive environment, and reward merit. The emphasis on a strategy driven by innovation is also critically important for those countries that have already attained high-income status.Publication World Development Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-01)Middle-income countries are in a race against time. Many of them have done well since the 1990s to escape low-income levels and eradicate extreme poverty, leading to the perception that the last three decades have been great for development. But the ambition of the more than 100 economies with incomes per capita between US$1,100 and US$14,000 is to reach high-income status within the next generation. When assessed against this goal, their record is discouraging. Since the 1970s, income per capita in the median middle-income country has stagnated at less than a tenth of the US level. With aging populations, growing protectionism, and escalating pressures to speed up the energy transition, today’s middle-income economies face ever more daunting odds. To become advanced economies despite the growing headwinds, they will have to make miracles. Drawing on the development experience and advances in economic analysis since the 1950s, World Development Report 2024 identifies pathways for developing economies to avoid the “middle-income trap.” It points to the need for not one but two transitions for those at the middle-income level: the first from investment to infusion and the second from infusion to innovation. Governments in lower-middle-income countries must drop the habit of repeating the same investment-driven strategies and work instead to infuse modern technologies and successful business processes from around the world into their economies. This requires reshaping large swaths of those economies into globally competitive suppliers of goods and services. Upper-middle-income countries that have mastered infusion can accelerate the shift to innovation—not just borrowing ideas from the global frontiers of technology but also beginning to push the frontiers outward. This requires restructuring enterprise, work, and energy use once again, with an even greater emphasis on economic freedom, social mobility, and political contestability. Neither transition is automatic. The handful of economies that made speedy transitions from middle- to high-income status have encouraged enterprise by disciplining powerful incumbents, developed talent by rewarding merit, and capitalized on crises to alter policies and institutions that no longer suit the purposes they were once designed to serve. Today’s middle-income countries will have to do the same.Publication World Bank Annual Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-25)This annual report, which covers the period from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, has been prepared by the Executive Directors of both the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA)—collectively known as the World Bank—in accordance with the respective bylaws of the two institutions. Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors, has submitted this report, together with the accompanying administrative budgets and audited financial statements, to the Board of Governors.Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.