The chapter summarises major developments in sub-Sahara Africa focusing on the themes of elections, conflicts and the status and performance of sub-Sahara Africa in the world economy.
This Policy Note focuses on the gendered consequences of the militarisation of the Horn of Africa. Despite being in different ‘moments’ of conflict, the countries of this region share features of extreme social, economic and political violence, which impact negatively on their citizens. Protracted refugee and refugee-like conditions, extreme disinvestment in social programmes, increasing militarisation and political repression adversely affect women, thereby further entrenching gender disparities. Concerted national and international efforts and resources should support local democratic initiatives to find political solutions to these protracted conflicts and advance the struggle against sexual and gender-based violence and discrimination.
This policy brief takes a regional perspective based on a rapid review of the extant literature to cascading climate risks and their links with migration in North Africa. Understanding the climate-migration nexus in the context of North Africa is a cornerstone for taking informed decisions and developing strategies to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change, including potential human mobility.
This study investigates the association between individuals’ concern about contracting COVID-19 and their compliance with recommended preventive and mitigation measures, namely wearing face masks, maintaining social distancing and handwashing, in the context of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The empirical analysis is based on a panel dataset from the Combined COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Survey, which was carried out in Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and Egypt. Applying a probit estimation technique, a positive and statistically significant association was found between the level of COVID-19 worries and individuals’ compliance with the mitigation measures. Notably, the results revealed that this association followed a “first-up-then-down” trend, showing that compliance with the three mitigation measures rose as individuals’ worries about contracting the virus increased, and then markedly decreased after they had been infected. Socio-demographic characteristics contributing to lower levels of compliance included being male, being over 60, having lower levels of education and having a lower household income. A cross-country analysis revealed remarkable differences between the five countries, with the strongest association between COVID-19 concerns and adherence to mitigation measures observed in Tunisia and Sudan, and the weakest association seen in Jordan and Morocco. Policy implications are outlined for effective risk communication and management during disease outbreaks and public health emergencies to encourage appropriate public health behaviours.
The COVID-19 pandemic had disruptive consequences for MENA countries’ agri-food value chains that exacerbated poverty and jeopardized food security. This study examines the relationship between individuals’ perception of contracting COVID-19 and their experience of food insecurity, using longitudinal data from the Combined COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household survey. It also investigates the underlying mechanisms of COVID-19 concerns and explores coping strategies employed by households to identify vulnerabilities in food security. The results provide compelling evidence of a strong association between individuals’ concern about the virus and various dimensions of food security, particularly reduced purchasing power and decreased meal frequency. Notably, this association follows an inverted U-shaped curve, with food insecurity initially increasing as worry grows, but declining after individuals contract the virus. High levels of concern were also linked to significant income decreases and worsening economic conditions. Moreover, individuals with higher concerns were more likely to rely on specific coping strategies, particularly spending savings and obtaining funds from relatives or friends. These findings underscore the need for government interventions during disease outbreaks and economic downturns to focus on alleviating individuals’ worry and fear to facilitate informed decision-making that minimizes food insecurity consequences. Additionally, the findings emphasize the need to strengthen social protection systems during public health and economic challenges to ensure food security for vulnerable populations.
We examine the perceived business risks and impacts on performance associated with the Russian aggression in Ukraine in February 2022 among 450 Egyptian small and medium-sized agrifood enterprises. Our analysis identifies six distinct clusters of enterprises based on their perceived risks and three clusters based on the observed impacts of the war. We find a strong association between perceived business risks and observed impacts, suggesting that the risks identified by agrifood SMEs significantly influence their actual business performance. This underscores the importance of understanding and effectively managing perceived risks to mitigate the negative impacts of external shocks, enhance operational resilience, and improve overall performance. Moreover, the results indicate that the consequences of the war extend beyond direct effects on agrifood enterprises, affecting various stages of the agrifood chain. This implies that, in times of crisis, the absence of a well-functioning agrifood SME sector may threaten the sustainability of the entire agrifood value chain. These insights contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the experiences of agrifood SMEs during the early stages of the war, helping policymakers and enterprises prioritize risk management strategies and allocate resources effectively to enhance performance and competitiveness in times of crisis.
The generally held belief is that government spending on education and research and development is to bring about direct impacts on the advancement and sustainability of an economy. Nonetheless, this evidence is not prevalent within industrialized and third-world economies, particularly among the foremost ten carbon dioxide releasing economies. Therefore, the OLS and the DEA are used to estimate the relationship between government public spending on research and development plus green economic advancement, utilizing data from several countries between 2008 and 2018. The findings reveal a varying green economic expansion indicator, which is a result of inadequate government programs to deliver results. Subsequently, for types of expenditure where formal juxtaposition can be made, such as RE compared with conventional energy, the authors detect that multipliers on green cost are almost twofold their traditional sources. The point approximate of the multipliers is 1.1–1.7 for green energy financing and 0.4 and 0.7 for conventional energy financing, depending on time and modeling. These results passed all the required sensitivity analyses. They provided backing to the bottom-up analysis, which reveals that controlling global warming, including preventing biodiversity extinction, works hand in hand with creating economic development and advancement.
Adolescent sexual and reproductive health remains a major public health challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Comprehensive sex education (CSE) has been hailed as a key strategy to inform young people about sexual health and wellbeing and prevent negative health outcomes. This paper presents an overview of the trends and challenges around sex education in SSA and puts forth key recommendations for future research and policy initiatives.
There is an overwhelming focus on the state and the private sector in the language and practice of privatisation, even though it calls for a tripartite arrangement that includes the people. A major consequence is the failure to comprehend and assess fully the important role of the people. While the people have a major part in supporting privatisation through payment of user charges, they are not often seen as key partners by city governments in Africa. Public participation has important implications for finance and cost recovery. Thus a people-centred approach to privatisation in which the users of services are consulted and involved in decision-making processes is crucial to the emergence of sustainable solid waste management systems in African cities. This study provides useful insights into the complexity of public participation in the context of privatisation of solid waste services and offers policy guidelines relevant to the major stakeholders.
Spatial inequality in service delivery is a common feature in African cities. Several factors account for the phenomenon but there is growing attention towards urban governance and the role of the state. Urban governance policies such as privatization serve as key strategies through which the state regulates and (re)produces spatial inequality in service delivery. This study examined how governance practices related to privatization and the regulatory role of the state reinforce spatial inequalities in the delivery of solid waste services in Abuja, Nigeria. It focused primarily on the issue of cost recovery. Privatization became a major focus in Abuja in 2003 when the government launched a pilot scheme. Although it has brought improvements in service delivery, privatization has also increased the gap in the quality of services delivered in different parts of the city. Drawing on empirical data, the study revealed that little sensitivity to income and affordability, and to income differentials between neighbourhoods in the fixing of user charges and in the choice of the billing method is contributing to spatial inequalities in service delivery. Furthermore, the study suggests that these practices are linked to a broader issue, a failure of the government to see the people as partners. It therefore calls for more inclusive governance especially in decision-making processes. The study also emphasizes the need for a policy document on solid waste management, as this would encourage a critical assessment of vital issues including how privatization is to be funded, especially inlow-income areas.
Several African countries are tackling the issue of slums and informal settlements by building completely new housing developments. However, many residents view these new areas as less habitable because of poor social conditions. Drawing on three case studies, this policy note argues that community engagement is crucial when planning to replace informal settlements with modern housing in African cities.
The chapter is an overview of major events and key developments in the West African sub-region in 2017.
The Africa Yearbook covers major domestic political developments, the foreign policy and socio-economic trends in sub-Sahara Africa – all related to developments in one calendar year. The Yearbook contains articles on all sub-Saharan states, each of the four sub-regions (West, Central, Eastern, Southern Africa) focusing on major cross-border developments and sub-regional organizations as well as one article on continental developments and one on African-European relations. While the articles have thorough academic quality, the Yearbook is mainly oriented to the requirements of a large range of target groups: students, politicians, diplomats, administrators, journalists, teachers, practitioners in the field of development aid as well as business people.
Africa is currently home to some 78 million people with disabilities. Meanwhile, recent years have seen the size and populations of the continent’s major cities increasing at a startling rate. As a result, there is a pressing need to consider issues of urban design and accessibility, and how they affect people with disabilities.
The democratic opening presented by Nigerias successful transition to civil rule (June 1998 to May 1999) unleashed a host of hitherto repressed or dormant political forces. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between genuine demands by these forces on the state and outright criminality and mayhem. Post-transition Nigeria is experiencing the proliferation of ethnic militia movements purportedly representing, and seeking to protect, their ethnic interests in a country, which appears incapable of providing the basic welfare needs of its citizens.
It is against the background of collective disenchantment with the Nigerian state, and the resurgence of ethnic identity politics that this research interrogates the growing challenge posed by ethnic militias to the Nigerian democracy project. The central thesis is that the over-centralization of power in Nigerias federal practice and the failure of post-transitional politics in genuinely addressing the National Question, has resulted in the emergence of ethnic militias as a specific response to state incapacity. The short- and long-term threats posed by this development to Nigerias fragile democracy are real, and justify the call for a National Conference that will comprehensively address the demands of the ethnic nationalities.
This discussion paper examines the linkages between gender and gender inequality in the context of conflict, sexual violence and HIV transmission, and their impact on postconflict reconstruction in Sierra Leone and Liberia. It makes two critical contributions to a gendered perspective on post-conflict transitions in West Africa. First, it notes that contrary to conventional wisdom, post-war transitions to relative peace have made little difference to women’s exposure to chronic sexual violence, with potential implications for increased HIV transmission. Second, the study interrogates those assumptions linking war-related sexual violence to high HIV prevalence in post-conflict contexts, by showing that despite over a decade of armed conflict, Liberia and Sierra Leone had adult HIV prevalence rates that were among the lowest in West Africa. This paper goes beyond generally held notions of the sexual and gender dimensions of civil wars in Africa and points to a gap in, and key challenge for studies and policies on post-conflict reconstruction in Africa.
The evidence is incontrovertible that Liberia (with its two civil wars, 1989-97 and 2000-03) and Sierra Leone (with its 1991-2001 war) have emerged from two of the most inhuman, ferocious and cruel conflicts in the post-Cold war era. The scale of destruction, rape, mayhem, arson and torture perpetrated during these wars was among the greatest in Africa’s postcolonial history. Women, especially adolescents and young adults, were exposed to extreme sexual brutality at a time when a growing heterosexually-driven HIV pandemic was occurring in the West African sub-region. Both countries also experienced an economic and social collapse that resulted in human development indicators on employment, income, health, education, women’s status and child well-being that are among the lowest in the world. Protracted armed conflicts, as witnessed in Liberia and Sierra Leone and beyond, expose women and girls to unprecedented levels and forms of sexual violence. Moreover, the expectation that the transition from war to peace will lead to significantly reduced sexual violence against women (SVAW) is often disappointed. Instead, post-conflict transitions tend to produce a change in the predominant forms of sexual violence and the profile of its perpetrators. The extended and interlinked conflicts in these neighbouring countries relate at a fundamental level to the persistent denial of citizenship rights to particular population sub-groups over several decades. Within such landscapes of severe social, economic and political marginalization and deprivation, women and girls were bound to suffer more than men and boys during and after the wars as a result of long-established and deeply entrenched patriarchal structures and ideologies in both countries. The persistence of SVAW during post-conflict transitions tends to increase the risk of HIV infection among younger women relative to the phase of armed conflict. A key causal factor is men’s highly exploitative, transactional and cross-generational multiple sexual activities. Thus far, the dominant responses to this complex of issues in post-conflict West Africa have lacked a nuanced understanding of the underlying drivers of sexual violence and its intersections with women’s higher risk of HIV infection.The policy responses to the challenges of post-conflict reconstruction and peace-building in West Africa have generally focused more on traditional security, physical infrastructurere building and economic revitalization issues than on such highly gendered human security concerns as sexual violence and violations of reproductive rights. Left unaddressed, these persisting or worsening human security challenges, affecting at least half their populations, make sustainable peace and development in post-conflict Liberia and Sierra Leone nearly impossible.
Filmed during the 50th anniversary conference 'Fifty years with Africa in focus', 12 October 2012 in Uppsala, Sweden. Part 1: 18 min. 39 sek. Part 2: 48 min. 47 sek.
Background
This paper presents findings from a qualitative effectiveness evaluation of an intervention aimed at improving caregiver-young adolescent sexual and reproductive health (SRH) communication including training modules for caregivers on parent-child SRH communication.
Methods
Data was collected (October 2021-November 2021) using a narrative interviewing technique with thirty caregivers (8 males and 22 females), who received the parent-child communication intervention in Mbarara district, south-western Uganda. We explored caregivers’ experiences with the intervention based on four domains of change: caregiver-young adolescent communication on SRH issues, knowledge and attitudes towards adolescent SRH, parenting skills, and personal life and family. Thematic analysis was used to code and analyse the data, with attention to gender differences.
Results
Findings highlight positive parenting as a key attribute of SRH communication, along with a transformation of knowledge and attitudes towards the SRH of young adolescents leading to an overall improvement in SRH communication. However, communication is still limited to comfortable topics.
Conclusion
Our findings indicate improved caregiver–adolescent SRH communication practices following a community intervention. Programming for adolescent health on broader sexuality topics, comfortability and attitude change among caregivers could promote behaviour change on a long term. Future studies may focus on the long term impacts of interventions of this nature and test interventions aimed at addressing comfortability with discussingSRH issues.
Att studera Afrika är en guide till Afrikastudier inom främst det samhällsvetenskapliga området. Både tryckta och internetbaserade informationskällor behandlas i denna nya, grundligt uppdaterade upplaga. Boken ger praktist vägledning till en rad hjälpmedel för litteratur- och faktasökning. Dessutom finns fylliga introduktioner till litteraturen inom ämnesområdena historia, politik och ekonomi. Boken vänder sig i första hand till studerande och forskare, men även lärare, journalister och bibliotekarier med flera har nytta av den.
The book is about gender politics in Mozambique over three decades from 1975 to 2005. The book is also about different ways of understanding gender and sexuality. Gender policies from Portuguese colonialism through Frelimo socialism to later neo-liberal economic regimes share certain basic assumptions about men, women and gender relations. But to what extent do such assumptions fit the ways in which rural Mozambican men and women see themselves? The author argues that gender relations should be investigated, not assumed, and that policies not matching people’s lives are unlikely to succeed.
The empirical data on which the author draws are from a unique body of material collected in 1982-1984 by the Mozambican National Women's Organization, and from more recent fieldwork. Her research demonstrates short-comings in Western feminist conceptualizations, and shows how insights from African feminist thinking may enhance understandings of gender, both in and beyond Africa.
The literature suggests marked gender inequality in the use of agricultural technologydespite the availability of evidence that women could be as productive as menwhen given equal access to agricultural resources. This underscores an urgent needto consider improving women’s access to agricultural technology to ensure thesustainable provision of food for all people, and particularly those in developingcountries. This study addresses two specific objectives. It: (a) examines genderdifferences in households’ use of farm-level technology (herbicides, pesticidesand inorganic fertilizer); and (b) assesses the impact of the uptake of agriculturaltechnology on farm production and food consumption, paying particular attentionto the gender of the household head. The results of a three-stage least squares (3SLS)regression reveal that households’ uptake of agricultural technology has a significantpositive effect on their dietary diversity and food consumption expenditure per capitadue to increased farm production. While these results are consistent regardless of thegender of the household head, the extent of effects for female-headed householdsis almost double that for male-headed households. Therefore, an essential policyimplication of our result is that the government could use input subsidies to addresssome of the gender gaps with regard to agricultural technology access and use. Suchefforts should address any entrenched inequalities in women’s access to agriculturalproduction resources and consider other socioeconomic factors such as education andlandholding, which contribute to gender inequality in agricultural technology uptake
Pengar i handen – barnbidrag, pensioner och andra kontanta stöd – minskar fattigdom och hunger effektivt. Det visar erfarenheter från en rad utvecklingsländer. Även små bidrag gör att människor kan äta mer och bättre, blir friskare och kan låta sina barn gå i skolan. Sveriges historia visar att sociala trygghetssystem krävs för att ge alla en dräglig levnadsnivå och en stabil samhällsutveckling. Ändå har det svenska biståndet inte stöttat utvecklingen av sådana system i fattiga länder. I denna antologi diskuterar 12 författare vilken roll sociala trygghetssystem kan spela i kampen mot hunger och fattigdom, och hur olika aktörer kan bidra.
This book present some examples of the richness and variety of contemporary reserch on rural-urban interactions by francophone researchers. Case studies are drawn from Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Congo, Benin, Senegal and Togo.
Epidemics and institutional responses to them reveal the strengths and weaknesses of health systems. They also often engender and reflect existing political, economic and social tensions whenever and wherever they occur. This policy note outlines some of acute and chronic political and social conditions that have facilitated transmission and continue to pose a challenge for community and government responses to Ebola. It also highlights the significance of building health systems to avert and address future health crises.
For thousands of years, Ethiopia has depended on its smallholding farmers to provide the bulk of its food needs. But now, such farmers find themselves under threat from environmental degradation, climate change and declining productivity. As a result, smallholder agriculture has increasingly become subsistence-oriented, with many of these farmers trapped in a cycle of poverty. Smallholders have long been marginalised by mainstream development policies, and only more recently has their crucial importance been recognised for addressing rural poverty through agricultural reform.
This collection, written by leading Ethiopian scholars, explores the scope and impact of Ethiopia’s policy reforms over the past two decades on the smallholder sector. Focusing on the Lake Tana basin in northwestern Ethiopia, an area with untapped potential for growth, the contributors argue that any effective policy will need to go beyond agriculture to consider the role of health, nutrition and local food customs, as well as including increased safeguards for smallholder’s land rights. They in turn show that smallholders represent a vitally overlooked component of development strategy, not only in Ethiopia but across the global South.
Climate change is causing growing variability and uncertainty in rainfall in Africa. Since the continent's food production systems are dominantly rain-fed, these changes are putting food security at even higher risk. In order to reduce this dependency, institutional reforms in the agricultural water sectors have become a priority in research and policy.
In this report, Atakilte Beyene, senior researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, together with twelve researchers based in Africa, studies current agricultural water reforms in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and other East African countries. The report consists of four case studies and an introductory section. The first case study evaluates the performance of community participation in water resources governance in the Mount Kenya Region. It uncovers the implication of a ban on traditional institutions on water security at a catchment level. The second case analyses the prospects of introducing pro-poor water schemes in conditions where climate change and water inequality are already challenges. It identifies incentive mechanisms that enhance more efficient distribution and utilization of water resources. The third case examines impacts of competitive and intensive farming strategies, especially irrigation schemes, on water demands. The final case study explores how advances in information and communication technologies improve water-use management systems across organizational and geographic scales.