Regional Development In Africa Research Articles

Editorial on Special Issue on COVID-19 and Regional Development in Africa

Editorial Note Prof. Badar Alam Iqbal, Guest Editor of Special Issue "COVID-19 and Regional Development [Economic and Social Development] in Africa, writes an Editorial for this Special Issue. Through this editorial, the researchers may find the special issue as a value addition to the existing literature on the theme. All five papers were received on the different aspects of the theme providing an interesting reading and deeper insight into the issue.

Quality of Sub-national Government and Regional Development in Africa

Despite widespread interest in government quality and economic development, the role of sub-national government has been largely overlooked. This represents an omission in Africa, given ongoing processes of devolution in much of the continent. In this article, we consider the impact of sub-national government institutions on economic development in 339 regions across 22 African countries. We create a novel index of sub-national government quality based on large-scale survey data and assess its impact on regional economies using satellite data on night light luminosity. To address causality concerns, we instrument sub-national government quality with data from pre-colonial societies. Our results show a positive and significant relationship between sub-national government quality and regional economic development, even when controlling for the quality of national-level institutions. Better sub-national governments are a powerful but often overlooked determinant of development in Africa.

A Bright Future? Regional Development in Africa

A Bright Future? Regional Development in Africa

Divide and Rule or the Rule of the Divided? Evidence from Africa

We investigate jointly the importance of contemporary country-level institutional structures and local ethnic-specific pre-colonial institutions in shaping comparative regional development in Africa. We utilize information on the spatial distribution of African ethnicities before colonization and regional variation in contemporary economic performance, as proxied by satellite light density at night. We exploit the fact that political boundaries across the African landscape partitioned ethnic groups in different countries subjecting identical cultures to different country-level institutions. Our regression discontinuity estimates reveal that differences in countrywide institutional arrangements across the border do not explain differences in economic performance within ethnic groups. In contrast, we document a strong association between pre-colonial ethnic institutional traits and contemporary regional development. While this correlation does not necessarily identify a causal relationship, this result obtains conditional on country fixed-effects, controlling for other ethnic traits and when we focus on pairs of contiguous ethnic homelands.

An analysis of provincial economic growth in South Africa 1991–2001*

During the last decade South Africa's regional development policy underwent a definite change in character. It evolved from being dominated by political criteria to one with greater emphasis on economic realities and constraints facing the country and subsequently the provinces as well. The provinces are engaged in a number of initiatives to promote economic growth and development in their regions. The question that comes to mind is where the success stories are and what are the determining factors in them? The aim of this article is therefore to evaluate and compare the economic growth performance of the various provinces in South Africa during the last decade. The article is organised as follows. The analysis will consist of a brief discussion of the latest developments in regional development policy in South Africa. This will be followed by the calculation of sectoral growth rates in the provinces for the period between 1991 and 2001. The findings will be further supplemented by the inclusion of rank correlation analysis in an attempt to identify determinants of economic growth. Possible explanations of the trends, relative successes and failures observed will be identified and presented.

Plant biotechnology: a tool for development in Africa

1Corresponding author Africa is, paradoxically, a continent rich in resources, and yet, lacking and lagging in overall development. When the wealth of Africa’s people is compared with that of other continents a contrasting picture of poverty, stunted growth and famine resulting from inadequate food production is revealed. The agricultural, and food security problems in Africa cannot be solved by applying plant biotechnology alone. Five key factors seem to be necessary for the improvement of crop production such as the use of agrochemicals, irrigation, plant breeding, farm management, and, of course, plant biotechnology. In this context, biotechnology can play a role in commercializi ng crops, creating new jobs and earning foreign exchange. The goals of national and regional development in Africa are attainable through proper planning and active participation in technical networks involving regional and international scientific cooperation that emphasize the use of plant and microbial genetic resources for economic development and progress.

Southern Africa's regional development policy: A panel discussion

(1986). Southern Africa's regional development policy: A panel discussion. Development Southern Africa: Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 432-442.