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Author: International Monetary Fund. African Dept. Publisher: International Monetary Fund ISBN: 1513536834 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 67
Book Description
Sub-Saharan Africa is facing an unprecedented health and economic crisis that threatens to throw the region off its stride, reversing the encouraging development progress of recent years. Furthermore, by exacting a heavy human toll, upending livelihoods, and damaging business and government balance sheets, the crisis threatens to retard the region’s growth prospects in the years to come. Previous crises tended to impact affect countries in the region differentially, but no country will be spared this time.
Author: Edward Oughton Publisher: International Monetary Fund ISBN: Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 34
Book Description
We develop a detailed model to evaluate the necessary investment requirements to achieve affordable universal broadband. The results indicate that approximately $418 billion needs to be mobilized to connect all unconnected citizens globally (targeting 40-50 GB/Month per user with 95 percent reliability). The bulk of additional investment is for emerging market economies (73 percent) and low-income developing countries (24 percent). We also find that if the data consumption level is lowered to 10-20 GB/Month per user, the total cost decreases by up to about half, whereas raising data consumption to 80-100 GB/Month per user leads to a cost increase of roughly 90 percent relative to the baseline. Moreover, a 40 percent cost decrease occurs when varying the peak hour quality of service level from the baseline 95 percent reliability, to only 50 percent reliability. To conclude, broadband policy assessments should be explicit about the quantity of data and the reliability of service provided to users. Failure to do so will lead to inaccurate estimates and, ultimately, to poor broadband policy decisions.
Author: World Bank Publisher: World Bank Publications ISBN: 0821380834 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
Sustainable infrastructure development is vital for Africa s prosperity. And now is the time to begin the transformation. This volume is the culmination of an unprecedented effort to document, analyze, and interpret the full extent of the challenge in developing Sub-Saharan Africa s infrastructure sectors. As a result, it represents the most comprehensive reference currently available on infrastructure in the region. The book covers the five main economic infrastructure sectors information and communication technology, irrigation, power, transport, and water and sanitation. 'Africa s Infrastructure: A Time for Transformation' reflects the collaboration of a wide array of African regional institutions and development partners under the auspices of the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa. It presents the findings of the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD), a project launched following a commitment in 2005 by the international community (after the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland) to scale up financial support for infrastructure development in Africa. The lack of reliable information in this area made it difficult to evaluate the success of past interventions, prioritize current allocations, and provide benchmarks for measuring future progress, hence the need for the AICD. Africa s infrastructure sectors lag well behind those of the rest of the world, and the gap is widening. Some of the main policy-relevant findings highlighted in the book include the following: infrastructure in the region is exceptionally expensive, with tariffs being many times higher than those found elsewhere. Inadequate and expensive infrastructure is retarding growth by 2 percentage points each year. Solving the problem will cost over US$90 billion per year, which is more than twice what is being spent in Africa today. However, money alone is not the answer. Prudent policies, wise management, and sound maintenance can improve efficiency, thereby stretching the infrastructure dollar. There is the potential to recover an additional US$17 billion a year from within the existing infrastructure resource envelope simply by improving efficiency. For example, improved revenue collection and utility management could generate US$3.3 billion per year. Regional power trade could reduce annual costs by US$2 billion. And deregulating the trucking industry could reduce freight costs by one-half. So, raising more funds without also tackling inefficiencies would be like pouring water into a leaking bucket. Finally, the power sector and fragile states represent particular challenges. Even if every efficiency in every infrastructure sector could be captured, a substantial funding gap of $31 billion a year would remain. Nevertheless, the African people and economies cannot wait any longer. Now is the time to begin the transformation to sustainable development.
Author: Edward L. Glaeser Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022680061X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 479
Book Description
Policy makers often call for increased spending on infrastructure, which can encompass a broad range of investments, from roads and bridges to digital networks that will expand access to high-speed broadband. Some point to the near-term macroeconomic benefits, such as job creation, associated with infrastructure spending; others point to the long-term effects of such spending on productivity and economic growth. Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment explores the links between infrastructure investment and economic outcomes, analyzing key economic issues in the funding and management of infrastructure projects. It includes new research on the short-run stimulus effects of infrastructure spending, develops new estimates of the stock of US infrastructure capital, and explores incentive aspects of public-private partnerships with particular attention to their allocation of risk. The volume provides a reference for researchers seeking to study infrastructure issues and for policymakers tasked with determining the appropriate level and allocation of infrastructure spending.
Author: Tania Begazo Publisher: World Bank Publications ISBN: 1464818371 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 348
Book Description
All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, broader use can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of country populations averaged across Sub-Saharan Africa, but only 22 percent use such services. The average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers, as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: the affordability of these new technologies and the willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small and medium businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skill-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty across Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.
Author: Rasmané Ouedraogo Publisher: International Monetary Fund ISBN: 1513545698 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 40
Book Description
This paper studies the effect of digitalization on the perception of corruption and trust in tax officials in Africa. Using individual-level data from Afrobarometer surveys and several indices of digitalization, we find that an increase in digital adoption is associated with a reduction in the perception of corruption and an increase in trust in tax officials. Exploiting the exogeneous deployment of submarine cables at the local level, the paper provides evidence of a negative impact of the use of Internet on the perception of corruption. Yet, the paper shows that the dampening effect of digitalization on corruption is hindered in countries where the government has a pattern of intentionally shutting down the Internet, while countries that successfully promote information and communication technology (ICT) enjoy a more amplified effect.
Author: Marcio Cruz Publisher: World Bank Publications ISBN: 1464816875 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 151
Book Description
Senegal, like all African countries, needs better and more jobs for its growing population. The main message of Digital Senegal for Inclusive Growth is that broader use of productivity-enhancing technologies by households and enterprises can generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. Adoption of better technologies can support both Senegal’s short-term objective of economic recovery and its vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. But this is not automatic. This book leverages a novel survey instrument that measures adoption of technologies at the firm level. Results from this survey show that there is a large average technological gap in Senegal relative to firms in Brazil, in the range of 36 and 30 percent for extensive (whether firms use it at all) and intensive (the most frequently applied) uses of better technologies such as for business administration. Except for a small number of firms, enterprises still mostly use manual, analog technologies to perform general and sector specific business functions. Micro-size informal enterprises lag even further. The benefits from technology adoption are significant. Digital technologies are an enabler of economy-wide productivity and jobs growth by catalyzing adoption of complementary technologies, including many not accessible without digital infrastructure. For households, mobile internet coverage is associated with 14 percent higher total consumption, as well as a 10 percent lower extreme poverty rate—and jobs with higher earnings. Firms with better technologies have higher levels of productivity, generate more jobs, and increase the share of lower-skilled workers on their payroll, on average: an increase in technological sophistication across general business functions that the firm uses most intensively, such as using standard software rather than writing by hand for business administration, is associated with a 14 percent higher jobs growth rate. For these and other inclusive growth benefits to be realized, Senegal should focus on ensuring availability of affordable digital infrastructure and implementing targeted incentives to promote use by firms of better technologies as well as policies to narrow deepening digital divides across enterprises and households.
Author: Mauricio Mesquita Moreira Publisher: Inter-American Development Bank ISBN: 1597823651 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 381
Book Description
Thirty years after the region embarked on large-scale liberalization, trade policy could have been expected to become all but irrelevant. Instead, a mismatch between expectations and what could realistically be delivered set the stage for much of the disappointment, skepticism, and fatigue regarding trade policy in the region, particularly in the early 2000s. By setting the bar unrealistically high, governments and analysts made trade policies an easy target for special interests that were hurt by liberalization and for those ideologically opposed to free trade. The most immediate victims were the more tangible growth and welfare gains, whose relevance was lost amid the noise of grandiose visions.
Author: Felix F. Simione
Author: Felix F. Simione
Author: International Monetary Fund. African Dept.
Author: Edward Oughton
Author: International Monetary
Author: World Bank
Author: Edward L. Glaeser
Author: Tania Begazo
Author: Rasmané Ouedraogo
Author: Marcio Cruz
Author: Mauricio Mesquita Moreira