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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Japan’S Ticad: Alternative Global Framework For Africa’S Development?, Bertha Z. Osei-Hwedie, Kwaku Osei-Hwedie Nov 2010

Japan’S Ticad: Alternative Global Framework For Africa’S Development?, Bertha Z. Osei-Hwedie, Kwaku Osei-Hwedie

Zambia Social Science Journal

Since 1993, Japan has sought to aid Africa’s development through the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD). TICAD is a multilateral, donor-recipient framework within which Japan interacts with Africa on a range of development issues. It represents the Post Washington Consensus approach as an alternative donor strategy and development model, with the hope of replicating the East Asian development miracle in Africa. TICAD makes Japan an important source of development assistance to Africa and for facilitation of South-South cooperation. This article discusses TICAD’s principles, objectives and programmes. It focuses on TICAD’s achievements in terms of its impact on African …


Slides - Africa In The World Trade Network, Luca De Benedictis Sep 2010

Slides - Africa In The World Trade Network, Luca De Benedictis

Luca De Benedictis

Here you find the slides of the presentation of the paper Africa in the World Trade Network held in Lausanne University at ETSG 2010, September 10th 2010


Concurrent Sexual Partnerships Do Not Explain The Hiv Epidemics In Africa: A Systematic Review Of The Evidence, Larry Sawers, Eileen Stillwaggon Sep 2010

Concurrent Sexual Partnerships Do Not Explain The Hiv Epidemics In Africa: A Systematic Review Of The Evidence, Larry Sawers, Eileen Stillwaggon

Economics Faculty Publications

The notion that concurrent sexual partnerships are especially common in sub-Saharan Africa and explain the region’s high HIV prevalence is accepted by many as conventional wisdom. In this paper, we evaluate the quantitative and qualitative evidence offered by the principal proponents of the concurrency hypothesis and analyze the mathematical model they use to establish the plausibility of the hypothesis.

We find that research seeking to establish a statistical correlation between concurrency and HIV prevalence either finds no correlation or has important limitations. Furthermore, in order to simulate rapid spread of HIV, mathematical models require unrealistic assumptions about frequency of sexual …


Africa In The World Trade Network, Luca De Benedictis Aug 2010

Africa In The World Trade Network, Luca De Benedictis

Luca De Benedictis

This paper contributes to the analysis of the effect of the global financial crisis (Claessens et al., 2010) on African coutries (IMF, 2009) inspecting the effect of the crises on bilateral trade flows. The empirical analysis makes intensive use of network analysis techniques, describing the international trade of SSA countries as part of the world trade network. The paper analyzes the change in the topology of the trade network during the crisis. Single SSA countries participation to the network is reported in terms of link strength and centrality, showing if some specific countries were more radically disconnected from the giant …


Health And Growth: Causality Through Education, Rui Huang, Lilyan E. Fulginiti, E. Wesley Peterson Jul 2010

Health And Growth: Causality Through Education, Rui Huang, Lilyan E. Fulginiti, E. Wesley Peterson

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

Purpose--The paper theoretically and empirically investigates the impact on human capital investment decisions and income growth of lowered life expectancy as a result of HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Design/methodology/approach--The theoretical model is a three-period overlapping generations model where individuals go through three stages in their life, namely, young, adult and old. The model extends existing theoretical models by allowing the probability of premature death to differ for individuals at different life stage, and by allowing for stochastic technological advances. The empirical investigation focuses on the effect of HIV/AIDS on life expectancy and on the role of health on educational investments …


Cooperative Strategies On Parallel Tracks: The Nepad And Agoa Initiatives, Guelmbaye Ngarsandje Jul 2010

Cooperative Strategies On Parallel Tracks: The Nepad And Agoa Initiatives, Guelmbaye Ngarsandje

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

In July 2001, at the 37th of the former Organization of African Unity, African heads of states launched the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), a combination of the Omega Plan from Abdoulaye Wade and The Millennium African Renaissance Partnership initiated by Thabo Mbeki, respectively presidents of Senegal and South Africa. This was an achievement of tasks given by their peers in Algiers in 1999. Previously to that, the Clinton administration initiated the African Growth and Opportunity Act passed in law in 1998. Though the two programs aim at African development, they did not take in account each other.

This …


Brain Drain, Waste Or Gain? What We Know About The Kenyan Case, Ruth Uwaifo Oyelere Jun 2010

Brain Drain, Waste Or Gain? What We Know About The Kenyan Case, Ruth Uwaifo Oyelere

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Over the last three decades, Kenya and many other countries in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) have experienced rapid emigration to the developed world. The general view is that emigration from developing countries especially Africa has led to brain drain and brain waste. However, recent research on emigration from Mexico provides evidence of significant gains from emigration. This recent finding highlights the importance of looking at individual countries' diasporas. In this review paper, I focus on trends in the Kenyan diaspora. More importantly, I summarize what we know from the literature and data on Kenya with respect to issues of brain …


Global Economic Crisis: The Need For African Government Interventions For Rapid Economic Recovery And Stability, Hassan T. Sanni Jun 2010

Global Economic Crisis: The Need For African Government Interventions For Rapid Economic Recovery And Stability, Hassan T. Sanni

Bullion

The paper reappraises the various measures taken by African governments to curtail the effects of the global economic meltdown. This is with a view to re-emphasizing the need for strong interventions by African governments. The paper is organized into five sections. Aside from the introduction, section two reviews the genesis of the global economic crisis, while section three briefly discusses the impact of the global economic meltdown with greater emphasis on African economies. The global responses as well as African forms of interventions since the global shock are presented in section four of the paper. The summary, recommendations and conclusion …


Aid Effectiveness In Sub-Saharan Africa And South And Southeast Asia : An Analysis Of Substantive Measures Of Development, Brooke Christofferson Apr 2010

Aid Effectiveness In Sub-Saharan Africa And South And Southeast Asia : An Analysis Of Substantive Measures Of Development, Brooke Christofferson

Honors Theses

Recently, aid effectiveness has become a popular topic in the literature. Generally, it is measured by instrumental measures of well-being, specifically, GDP per capita. This paper uses a substantive approach, pioneered by Amartya Sen, to evaluate aid effectiveness. Substantive measures attempt to measure welfare directly. Specifically, I use infrastructure as measured by telephone lines per 100 people, life expectancy, economic diversification as measured by agriculture as a percentage of GDP, and education as measured by enrollment in primary school, as substantive measures of well- being. I find that aid is not allocated based on substantive need in the regions of …


Crime Against Informal Businesses In Africa: Natives Vs. Immigrants, Mohammad Amin Mar 2010

Crime Against Informal Businesses In Africa: Natives Vs. Immigrants, Mohammad Amin

Mohammad Amin

The literature on crime seeks to identify groups of agents based on their socio-economic-demographic characteristics that are more likely to be victims of crime than others. The present paper contributes to this literature by focusing on crime against informal businesses in Africa and highlighting how victimization rates vary between businesses owned by natives and immigrants. We find that immigrant-owned businesses are significantly more likely to be targeted by criminals than native-owned businesses. However, much of this difference is due to higher victimization rates for businesses owned by recent immigrants to the city. Businesses owned by immigrants that have spent about …


Gender And Informality (A Short Note), Mohammad Amin Mar 2010

Gender And Informality (A Short Note), Mohammad Amin

Mohammad Amin

For a sample of informal firms in Burkina Faso, Cameroons, Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Madagascar and Mauritius, this note compares male and female owned businesses. The results provide mixed evidence on a number of hypotheses discussed in the literature for firms in the formal sector. First, the female under-performance hypothesis is confirmed, but only for firm-size. For firm-efficiency measured by the average productivity of labor, we find little difference across male and female owned businesses. Second, consistent with the view that women may face glass-ceiling in getting managerial positions, we find that women managers in our sample have less experience …


Gender And Firm-Size: Evidence From Africa, Mohammad Amin Mar 2010

Gender And Firm-Size: Evidence From Africa, Mohammad Amin

Mohammad Amin

A number of studies show that relative to male owned businesses, female owned businesses are smaller in size. However, these studies are restricted to the formal or the organized sector. Also, with some exceptions, they focus on the developed countries. This paper explores the gender and firm-size relationship for a sample of informal or unregistered firms in six developing countries in Africa including Burkina Faso, Cameroons, Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Madagascar and Mauritius. We find strong evidence that female owned businesses are smaller than male owned businesses.

[Data and Stata do files included]


Home-Based Informal Businesses And The Gender Dimension, Mohammad Amin Feb 2010

Home-Based Informal Businesses And The Gender Dimension, Mohammad Amin

Mohammad Amin

Anecdotal evidence suggests that working from home makes it easier to balance work and family life. This is particularly attractive to women, who are viewed as primary caregivers in the family in most developing countries. However, there is some concern in the literature that family responsibility may detract from doing business, leading to fewer hours of operation and lower efficiency for home-based businesses run by women. The present paper tests these hypotheses using data on informal or unregistered firms in five African countries. We find strong evidence that female entrepreneurs have a greater proclivity compared with male entrepreneurs to work …


Immigrants In The Informal Sector: Evidence From Africa (Short Note), Mohammad Amin Jan 2010

Immigrants In The Informal Sector: Evidence From Africa (Short Note), Mohammad Amin

Mohammad Amin

A survey of informal businesses in Burkina Faso, Cameroons and Cape Verde shows that roughly half of the businesses are owned by immigrants. Systematic differences between immigrant-owned and native-owned businesses might be expected given that immigrants are usually a vulnerable group and take time to assimilate with the native community. While the survey shows some important differences between native and immigrant owners of businesses, there is no clear evidence that relative to natives, immigrants are either discriminated against, are less efficient or come from a relatively less privileged background. However, immigrants are more likely to be males, unmarried and migrate …


Estimating Hypothetical Bias In Economically Emergent Africa: A Generic Public Good Experiment, Arthur J. Caplan, David Aadland, Anthony Macharia Jan 2010

Estimating Hypothetical Bias In Economically Emergent Africa: A Generic Public Good Experiment, Arthur J. Caplan, David Aadland, Anthony Macharia

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

This paper reports results from a contingent valuation based public good experiment conducted in the African nation of Botswana. In a sample of university students, we find evidence that stated willingness to contribute to a public good in a hypothetical setting is higher than actual contribution levels. However, results from regression analysis suggest that this is true only in the second round of the experiment, when participants making actual contributions have learned to significantly lower their contribution levels. As globalization expands markets, and economies such as Botswana's continue to modernize, there is a growing need to understand how hypothetical bias …