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This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.
A deep insight into the emergence and persistence of new continental development institutions in Africa and their capacity to affect development outcomes.
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. The book examines the methodological challenges in analyzing the effectiveness of development policies. It presents a selection of tools and methodologies that can help tackle the complexities of which policies work best and why, and how they can be implemented effectively given the political and economic framework conditions of a country. The contributions in this book offer a continuation of the ongoing evidence-based debate on the role of agriculture and participatory policy processes in reducing poverty. They develop and apply quantitative political economy approaches by integrating quantitative models of political decision-making into existing economic modeling tools, allowing a more comprehensive growth-poverty analysis. The book addresses not only scholars who use quantitative policy modeling and evaluation techniques in their empirical or theoretical research, but also technical experts, including policy makers and analysts from stakeholder organizations, involved in formulating and implementing policies to reduce poverty and to increase economic and social well-being in African countries.
The early twenty-first century witnessed remarkable attempts by Africa's political leadership to promote regional integration as a means of fast-tracking economic progress, facilitating peace and security, consolidating democratic gains, and promoting the general welfare of the African people. The transition of the Organization of Unity (OAU) to the African Union (AU), as well as the foisting of a new economic blueprint for the continent-the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), combined with the growing role of the regional economic communities (RECs) in harmonizing and creating subregional norms and standards in the political and economic arena suggests a new trend towards regionalism in Africa. Indeed, in the new regional integration architecture, the RECs are considered to be the building blocks of the integration process led by the African Union. This new impetus of a regional development strategy was largely prompted by the slow pace of economic progress on the continent, the increasing marginalization of Africa in the global economy, and the need to create regional resources and standards that would benefit the continent in all spheres of social life. A painful realization became obvious that small micro-states in Africa sticking to their political independence and sovereignty would hardly make much progress in an increasingly globalised world. A macro-states' approach of regional integration has assumed Africa's new strategy to intervene in and integrate with a globalizing world. The current regional trend in Africa has received very little scholarly attention especially in a systematic and comprehensive way. This is due partly to the fact that the processes are currently unfolding and there is still uncertainty in the outcomes. Poor documentation and the dearth of primary materials (especially from the regional institutions) also contribute to the lack of scholarly work in this area. This study assembles the voices of some of the most seasoned African and Africanist scholars who have constantly, in one way or another, interacted with the integration process in Africa and kept abreast of the developments therein, and seeks to capture those developments in a nuanced manner in the economic, political and social spheres. The essence of this book is to analyze those processes--teasing out the issues, problems, challenges and major policy recommendations, with tentative conclusions on Africa's regional development trajectory. The book therefore fills major knowledge and policy gaps in Africa's regional development agenda. This book is a landmark contribution in a systematic attempt to comprehend Africa's regional development strategy led by the African Union. It examines the background, nuances, and dimensions of the process, which include the basis and historiography of pan-Africanism, the transition of the OAU to the AU, the issue of popular participation in development, the NEPAD and APRM initiatives, the evolving regional peace and security architecture, and the efforts of regional institutions to facilitate democracy, human rights, rule of law and good governance on the continent. The book underscores the fact that formidable obstacles and challenges abound in the trajectory, politics, and processes of this regional development paradigm, especially as Africa navigates an uncertain future in a deeply divided and unequal yet globalised World. The book constitutes a major reference material and compendium for a wide range of readers--students and scholars of African affairs and African development, policy makers both in Africa and the western countries, regional and international institutions and organizations, and all those interested in the past, present and future of Africa's development process.
The World Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Research Institute, and the Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development (FASID), in collaboration with researchers affiliated with the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), recently conducted a study on Africa s domestic enterprises to improve the understanding of the constraints micro and small enterprises in Africa face in improving productivity and expanding their markets. In Africa, there are stark performance gaps between domestically owned enterprises and foreign-owned enterprises in terms of sales performance, productivity, and ability to reach distant markets. Among others, size appears to be a dominant factor in explaining the gap. Against this background, the study analyzes how naturally formed industrial clusters concentrations of enterprises engaged in same or closely related industrial activities in specific locations could potentially mitigate constraints Africa s micro and small enterprises face and enhance their business performance. The study is one of the first comprehensive quantitative inquiries on industrial clusters in Africa. The analysis specifically focuses on the role of spontaneously grown clusters of light manufacturing industries based on a set of original case studies of industrial clusters conducted for this research project. One of the key findings from the case studies was that cluster-based micro and small enterprises are performing better than similar micro and small enterprises outside of the clusters in terms of sales performance and ability to reach distant markets. Market access is a leading reason for cluster-based enterprises to choose their current locations. However, cluster-based enterprises face another set of unique growth constraints. By the very nature of spontaneous agglomera tion, new enterprises continue to flow to the clusters seeking the profit opportunities and better access to markets at such locations. The result can be intense competition in addition to increased congestion. Space constraints often impede growth within clusters. The lack of alternative locations available for industrial activities in the same cities, generic infrastructure bottlenecks, and unclear zoning policies and their unpredictable changes limit firms location choices and constrain their mobility. While competition should improve efficiency, lack of capacity among those competing cluster-based enterprises to invest and innovate does not generate growth out of the competition. The vast majority of naturally formed clusters of light manufacturing industries in Africa are still at a survival level, where agglomeration externalities are only limited to expand quantity but not quality as we observe in more advanced innovation-oriented clusters in elsewhere in the world. Existing studies on such natural industrial clusters in Africa have found that the lack of managerial skills among entrepreneurs running micro and small enterprises is a major constraint for innovation and growth in the clusters. As a part of this study, pilot managerial skills training programs were conducted in two industrial clusters on an experimental basis, where a group of randomly selected entrepreneurs within the clusters were given three-week long crush course of based management such as bookkeeping, marketing, business planning, and production management. The impact evaluation of the experiments showed significant positive impacts of the training programs on value added and gross profits of enterprises. Raising the current survival-type industrial clusters, which have been formed as a coping mechanism to weak investment climate, into more dynamic innovating clusters will be an important avenue for fostering growth of micro and small enterprises in Africa. While national efforts to improve investment climate and investments in human capital are undoubtedly important, there could be more targeted policies to be formulated, in complementing general policies, to support growth of micro and small domestic enterprises using existing industrial clusters as a natural springboard for their growth. In that context, the study discusses the merit of cluster-based managerial human capital development to build steps toward more innovation-oriented clusters, the importance of sound spatial planning policy, particularly at the local level in the context of urban planning, the need to expand market access and economic linkages for industrial clusters including regional integration and linkages with large enterprises.
First Published in 1997. This book examines the history of economic development in the African American community and the use of entrepreneurship to improve the economic well-being of its members. The research in this book improves upon previous studies by analyzing factors related to business success by industry and region. Finally, this book sets forth for policy makers recommendations soundly based on a comprehensive understanding of the history and dynamics of African American enterprise.