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It is with great
pleasure that I present to you the ninth edition of Research
News, the maiden edition of my tenure as Director of
Research at AERC. This edition is also the first since the
launch of the AERC Strategic Plan for 2005–2010, whose
theme is continuity and innovation. In the spirit of continuity,
this edition of Research News follows the format of its
predecessors. In conformity with the desire to innovate,
subsequent editions will contain new features that we hope will
be value adding. As a prelude, some of the new Research
Programme initiatives contained in the Strategic Plan are
presented as the Research Feature department
in this issue.
In Policy Forum, Stephen Gelb addresses the
feasibility of attaining the Millennium Development Goals in
Africa. After reminding us of the abysmal performance of
sub-Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2005, as enunciated in the
MDGs progress report, Professor Gelb takes issue with the stance
of the Millennium Development Project that the binding
constraint to ending poverty in SSA is finance. In his view, at
least two problems confront this money is the problem
argument: The prevalence of states weakened by 20 years of
structural adjustment and economic decline and the preponderance
of even weaker or missing institutions. Without effective states
and strong institutions, he posits that SSA countries would not
be able to use the massive amounts of financial support
proposed. Professor Gelb suggests that unless poverty reduction,
improved health and education, and gender equity are at the
heart of policy goals, any coalition to support policy would
exclude the interests of the majority of the population and
would stand little chance of succeeding politically.
We give considerable attention to Collaborative
Research in this issue because the substantive aspects
of all collaborative research projects embarked on during the
late 1990s have been concluded. Some of the projects were
massive – they produced numerous individual country case studies
and involved as many as 150 researchers – and as a part of the
dissemination process, it is important to articulate clearly the
key findings and policy lessons that can be drawn from them.
Accordingly, the project coordinators have provided summaries of
the major findings and policy lessons emanating from the
following research projects:
• African
Imperatives in the New World Trade Order
• Explaining
African Economic Growth Performance
• Poverty, Income
Distribution and Labour Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa (phase
I)
• Managing the
Transition from Aid Dependence in Africa
• Determinants of
Foreign Direct Investment in Africa
In addition to the study highlights presented by the authors,
a number of activities related to these project are of interest.
Beginning with African Imperatives in the New World Trade
Order, Ademola Oyejide recalls that the study was motivated
by the realization by all stakeholders that African economies
are influenced not only by their own domestic trade regimes and
macroeconomic policy environments, but also by the incentives
generated by external market access. Policy lessons that apply
to all SSA countries to varying degrees were presented at a
dissemination workshop held in November 2004 in Dar es Salaam
attended by a wide range of key stakeholders. These included
representatives of farmers’ organizations, manufacturers,
exporters, trade negotiators, the African Union, European Union,
World Trade Organization, United Nations Development Programme,
and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. After
expressing satisfaction with the findings and policy lessons,
the stakeholders called on AERC to conduct further studies to
deepen understanding of what has to be done to relax the export
supply constraints in so many African economies. In response,
AERC is embarking on a collaborative research project focusing
on this theme, the results of which should be available in the
near future.
Stephen O’Connell describes the outcome of the project,
Explaining African Economic Growth Performance, for which he
was a co-coordinator with Benno Ndulu and Charles Soludo. A
dissemination workshop will be organized soon to bring the
findings and policy lessons of this elaborate project to the
attention of all stakeholders. Meanwhile, arrangements are being
finalized with Cambridge University Press to publish a selection
of the case studies.
Perhaps the most important development problem confronting
African governments, their development partners and other
stakeholders is poverty. AERC is addressing this policy concern
through the collaborative research project on Poverty, Income
Distribution and Labour Market Issues, coordinated by Erik
Thorbecke and Germano Mwabu. One important impact of this
project is that the case study authors have been able to apply
their skills in the "real world" by playing important, sometimes
leading, roles in the articulation of poverty reduction strategy
papers of their respective countries. Each country team will
also soon organize a national dissemination workshop to bring
the findings and recommendations of the studies to local policy
makers and other stakeholders. AERC will subsequently convene a
regional workshop to share issues from a regional perspective.
The collaborative research project on Managing the
Transition from Aid Dependence in Africa, coordinated by
Samuel M. Wangwe and Carol Lancaster, stemmed from concern about
ever higher levels of aid dependence in Africa, coupled with
equal concern about the efficacy of aid. The output of this
project has already been published by AERC in the form of the
report of the dissemination conference organized in
collaboration with the Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF),
the World Bank, and the Norwegian Agency for Development
Cooperation (NORAD). The ODC also published a Policy Essay on
Managing a Smooth Transition from Aid Dependence in Africa.
Finally, the AERC special workshop on The Determinants of
Foreign Direct Investment in Africa, coordinated by Ibi
Ajayi, was motivated by the need to investigate the factors that
influence the flow of FDI to provide a basis for suggesting what
countries can do to attract the FDI that is most beneficial to
the development aspirations of the country. A special workshop
is essentially a collaborative research project on a smaller
scale; this one was co-financed by the AERC and IMF.
Arrangements are on to organize a major dissemination workshop
in collaboration with the Bank of Zambia later in the year.
AERC is arranging publication – or has already done so – of
the outputs of all these projects to ensure the wide
dissemination of results to policy makers, researchers, scholars
and other stakeholders for their use in policy deliberations,
research and teaching.
The Research Methodology department brings you
observations by Anke Hoeffler on the African growth debate.
Having carefully compared the results of a variety of research
approaches, Dr. Hoeffler concludes, among other things, that
rather than concentrating research efforts on the analysis of
what she terms a spurious Africa dummy, it may be more
worthwhile to focus on the continent’s low investment ratios and
high population growth rate, which she found to be sufficient
explanations for Africa’s low economic growth. She opines that
unless policies are changed to provide the right incentives for
an increase in investment and a reduction in population growth,
Africa’s income growth performance may continue to lag behind
the rest of the world.
Finally, the issue presents a list of new publications and a
selection of Abstracts of recent AERC Research
Papers, as well as the usual calendar of events.
I commend this edition to all AERC network members and other
stakeholders as we round off Phase V and mark the beginning of
the new AERC Strategic Plan, 2005–2010.
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