Special Issue: Statistical Tragedy in Africa? PDF Download

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 97

View

Book Description

Author: Morten Jerven
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317369335
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

View

Book Description
What do we know about economic development in Africa? The answer is that we know much less than we would like to think. This collection assesses the knowledge problem present in statistics on poverty, agriculture, labour, education, health, and economic growth. While diverse in origin, the contributors to this book are unified in two conclusions: the quality and quantity of data needs to be improved; and this is a concern not just for statisticians. Weaknesses in statistical methodology and practice can misinform policy makers, international agencies, donors, the private sector, and the citizens of African countries themselves. This is also a problem for academics from various disciplines, from history and economics to social epidemiology and education policy. Not only does academic work on Africa regularly use flawed data, but many problems encountered in surveys challenge common academic abstractions. By exploring these flaws, this book will provide a guide for scholars, policy makers, and all those using and commissioning surveys in Africa. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Development Studies.

Author: Morten Jerven
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317369343
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 136

View

Book Description
What do we know about economic development in Africa? The answer is that we know much less than we would like to think. This collection assesses the knowledge problem present in statistics on poverty, agriculture, labour, education, health, and economic growth. While diverse in origin, the contributors to this book are unified in two conclusions: the quality and quantity of data needs to be improved; and this is a concern not just for statisticians. Weaknesses in statistical methodology and practice can misinform policy makers, international agencies, donors, the private sector, and the citizens of African countries themselves. This is also a problem for academics from various disciplines, from history and economics to social epidemiology and education policy. Not only does academic work on Africa regularly use flawed data, but many problems encountered in surveys challenge common academic abstractions. By exploring these flaws, this book will provide a guide for scholars, policy makers, and all those using and commissioning surveys in Africa. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Development Studies.

Author: Shantayanan Devarajan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
While Africa may have overcome its growth tragedy, it is facing a statistical tragedy, in that the statistical foundations of the recent growth in per-capita GDP and reduction in poverty are quite weak. In many countries, GDP accounts use old methods, population censuses are out of date, and poverty estimates are infrequent and often not comparable over time. The proximate reasons have to do with weak capacity, inadequate funding, and a lack of coordination of statistical activities. But the underlying cause may be the political sensitivity of these statistics, and some donors' tendency to go around countries' own National Statistical Development Strategies (NSDS). Greater openness and transparency of statistics, and a higher profile for the NSDS, possibly with “naming and shaming” of those who try to circumvent it, may help Africans turn around their statistical tragedy.

Author: Morten Jerven
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317552997
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 225

View

Book Description
The chief economist for the World Bank's Africa region, Shanta Devarajan, delivered a devastating assessment of the capacity of African states to measure development in his 2013 article "Africa's Statistical Tragedy". Is there a "statistical tragedy" unfolding in Africa now? If so then examining the roots of the problem of provision of statistics in poor economies is certainly of great importance. This book on measuring African development in the past and in the present draws on the historical experience of colonial French West Africa, Ghana, Sudan, Mauritania and Tanzania and the more contemporary experiences of Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The authors each reflect on the changing ways statistics represent African economies and how they are used to govern them. This bookw as published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies.

Author: Morten Jerven
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801467616
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

View

Book Description
One of the most urgent challenges in African economic development is to devise a strategy for improving statistical capacity. Reliable statistics, including estimates of economic growth rates and per-capita income, are basic to the operation of governments in developing countries and vital to nongovernmental organizations and other entities that provide financial aid to them. Rich countries and international financial institutions such as the World Bank allocate their development resources on the basis of such data. The paucity of accurate statistics is not merely a technical problem; it has a massive impact on the welfare of citizens in developing countries. Where do these statistics originate? How accurate are they? Poor Numbers is the first analysis of the production and use of African economic development statistics. Morten Jerven's research shows how the statistical capacities of sub-Saharan African economies have fallen into disarray. The numbers substantially misstate the actual state of affairs. As a result, scarce resources are misapplied. Development policy does not deliver the benefits expected. Policymakers' attempts to improve the lot of the citizenry are frustrated. Donors have no accurate sense of the impact of the aid they supply. Jerven's findings from sub-Saharan Africa have far-reaching implications for aid and development policy. As Jerven notes, the current catchphrase in the development community is "evidence-based policy," and scholars are applying increasingly sophisticated econometric methods-but no statistical techniques can substitute for partial and unreliable data.

Author: Bitange Ndemo
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031244982
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 229

View

Book Description

Author: Matteo Rizzo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019879424X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 236

View

Book Description
How does public transport work in an African city under neoliberalism? Who owns what in it? Who has the power to influence its shape and changes in it over time? What does it mean to be a precarious and informal worker in the private minibuses that provide public transport in Dar es Salaam? These are the main questions that inform this in-depth case study of Dar es Salaam's public transport system over more than forty years. The growth of cities and informal economies are two central manifestations of globalization in the developing world. Taken for a Ride addresses both, drawing on long-term fieldwork in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and charting its public transport system's journey from public to private provision. This new addition to the Critical Frontiers of Theory, Research and Practice in International Development Studies series investigates this shift alongside the increasing deregulation of the sector and the resulting chaotic modality of public transport. It reviews state attempts to regain control over public transport and documents how informal wage relations prevailed in the sector. The changing political attitude of workers towards employers and the state is investigated: from an initial incapacity to respond to exploitation, to the political organisation and unionisation which won workers concessions on labour rights. A longitudinal study of workers throws light on patterns of occupational mobility in the sector. The book ends with an analysis of the political and economic interests that shaped the introduction of Bus Rapid Transit in Dar es Salaam, and local resistance to it. Taken for a Ride is an interdisciplinary political economy of public transport, exposing the limitations of market fundamentalist and postcolonial appraoches to the study of economic informality, the urban experience in developing countries, and their failure to locate the agency of the urban poor within their economic and political structures. It is both a contribution to and a call for the contextualised study of neoliberalism.

Author: Roberta Gatti
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464818657
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 72

View

Book Description
The Middle East and North Africa economies face an uncertain recovery. The war in Ukraine presents significant challenges to the global economy and the MENA region. Inflationary pressures brought about by the pandemic are likely to be further exacerbated by the conflict. The potential for rising food prices is even higher, which is likely to hurt the wallets of the poor and vulnerable in the region. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to cast a shadow. As the latest variant sweeps over the region, countries grapple with a host of problems depending on initial conditions and policy priorities. The region, like the rest of the world, is not out of the woods yet. Vaccinations remain the effective path out of the pandemic, leading to lower hospitalizations and death rates. Testing helps curb the spread. During times of uncertainty, it is important to not be overconfident about the region’s growth prospects. Growth forecasts serve as a significant signpost for policymakers to chart a path forward. Over the last decade, growth forecasts in the MENA region have often been inaccurate and overly optimistic, which can lead to economic contractions down the road due to ebullient borrowing. There is considerable room for the region to improve its forecasts that are largely hindered by opaque data systems, growth volatility and conflict. The MENA region lags considerably in the timely production of credible statistics. A key finding of the report is that the best way to improve forecasters is to provide forecasters with as much good quality information as possible.

Author: Mr.Manuk Ghazanchyan
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1475520972
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 38

View

Book Description
This study examines the drivers of growth in Sub-Saharan African countries, using aggregate data, from the past decade. We correlate recent growth experience to key determinants of growth, including private and public investment, government consumption, the exchange regime and real exchange rate, and current account liberalization, using various econometric methodologies, including fixed and random effects models, with cluster-robust standard errors. We find that, depending on the specification, higher private and public investments boost growth. Some evidence is found that government consumption exerts a drag on growth and that more flexible exchange regimes are beneficial to growth. The real exchange rate and liberalization variables are not significant.