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12. Gains and Gaps: Perceptions and Experiences of Gender in Africa
- Author:
- Carmen Alpin Lardies, Dominique Dryding, and Carolyn Logan
- Publication Date:
- 11-2019
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Afrobarometer
- Abstract:
- Key findings Africans share at least some of the SDG ambitions to create more equal societies. Across 34 countries, substantial majorities support women’s right to run for political office (71%) and to own and inherit land (72%). They are less committed, however, to full economic equality: A much slimmer majority (53%) favour equal access to paying jobs for women, compared to 42% who believe men should have preference. And even a woman’s fundamental right to physical safety has less-than-universal support: More than one in four Africans (28%) – including 24% of women – still see wife-beating as justifiable. In Gabon and Liberia, seven in 10 citizens share this view. While most Africans say girls and boys now have equal access to education, significant gender gaps in educational achievement remain. Even among the youngest cohort, more women than men have no formal education, and more men than women have post-primary schooling. Large majorities also say that women have achieved equal access to jobs. But women are less likely to participate in the labour market (55% vs. 67% of men), and among those who do, women are more likely to be unemployed (52% vs. 39%). About one in eight women (12%) say they experienced discrimination based on their gender during the past year. One in three (32%) Liberian women report this experience. Women lag behind men in ownership of assets and are substantially less likely to have decision-making power over household resources. Women also trail men on indicators of digital access and connection. And the gap may be widening: Although women’s Internet use has doubled over the past five years, the gender gap in regular Internet use has increased. Africans are divided on the question of whether women are making progress; 49% say equal opportunities and treatment for women are better than a few years ago, but almost as many say they are the same (31%) or worse (19%). Nonetheless, almost two-thirds (64%) give their governments positive marks on promoting equal rights. There is, in short, some disconnect between popular satisfaction with equality performance and significant – and sometimes growing – gaps in actual achievement.
- Topic:
- Education, Gender Issues, Poverty, Inequality, Sustainable Development Goals, and Feminism
- Political Geography:
- Africa
13. Is Poverty a binding constraint on Agricultural Growth in Rural Malawi?
- Author:
- Mirriam Muhome-Matita and Ephraim Wadonda Chirwa
- Publication Date:
- 07-2018
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)
- Abstract:
- Agriculture remains the most important sector in sub-Saharan Africa and is a dominant form of livelihood for a majority of the population that resides in the rural areas. In Malawi, agriculture accounts for 35 percent of GDP and generates more than 80 percent of foreign exchange. In addition, agriculture is the most important occupation for 71 percent of the rural population in which crop production accounts for 74 percent of all rural incomes. However, agriculture has failed to get Africa out of poverty, and most countries are experiencing low agricultural growth, rapid population growth, weak foreign exchange earnings and high transaction costs (World Bank, 2008).
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Economics, Political Economy, Poverty, World Bank, Economic Growth, and Rural
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Malawi
14. Why northern Ghana lags behind in Ghana’s growth and poverty reduction success
- Author:
- John Baptist D. Jatoe, Ramatu Al-Hassan, and Bamidele Adekunle
- Publication Date:
- 12-2017
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)
- Abstract:
- Ghana’s post adjustment growth and poverty reduction performance has been hailed as impressive, albeit with spatial disparities in the distribution of welfare, especially between the north and south of the country. Researchers generally agree that economic growth does not always reduce poverty. Indeed, the effectiveness of growth in reducing poverty depends on the level of inequality in the population. Growth that increases inequality may not reduce poverty; growth that does not change inequality (distribution-neutral growth) and growth that reduces inequality (pro-poor growth) result in poverty reduction. Policy makers can promote pro-poor growth by empowering the poor to participate in growth directly. Policy makers can focus on interventions that improve productivity in smallholder agriculture, particularly export crops, increasing employment of semi-skilled or unskilled labour, promoting technology adoption, increasing access to production assets, as well as effective participation in input and product markets. Also, increasing public spending on social services and infrastructure made possible by redistribution of the benefits of growth benefits the poor, indirectly.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Economics, Poverty, Labor Issues, Economic Growth, Labor Policies, Economic Policy, and Macroeconomics
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Ghana
15. Multidimensional poverty and wellbeing in Mozambique
- Author:
- Ricardo Santos and Vincenzo Salvucci
- Publication Date:
- 02-2017
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon involving things other than consumption — such as access to and quality of health and education, housing, possession of durable goods, freedom, and many other factors. The consumption and multidimensional poverty approaches are complementary: it is possible for example that a family has consumption levels below the poverty line but lives in a good quality home, its members have a good level of education, and vice versa.
- Topic:
- Education, Health, Poverty, Survey, and Housing
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Mozambique
16. Starting with People: A Human Economy Approach to Inclusive Growth in Africa
- Author:
- Kathy Wright
- Publication Date:
- 05-2017
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- High levels of inequality across Africa have prevented much of the benefits of recent growth from reaching the continent’s poorest people. To combat inequality in Africa, political and business leaders have to shape a profoundly different type of economy. It must start with the needs of Africa’s women and young people for good quality sustainable jobs, rather than the needs of the richest and of foreign investors. Leaders must use economic policy, taxation policy and social spending to build a human economy for Africa.
- Topic:
- Poverty, Inequality, Economy, Tax Systems, Sustainability, and Inclusion
- Political Geography:
- Africa
17. Transforming Sub Saharan Africa Agriculture
- Author:
- Jamal Saghir and Hans Hoogeveen
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University
- Abstract:
- Across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) agriculture is a dominant sector in the economies of most countries accounting for between 30 to 40 percent of gross domestic product, and the sector is a leading source of jobs for over two-thirds of Africa’s population. And yet, though it has the potential to be an agricultural power, a combination of low productivity and an inadequate policy framework make SSA the world’s most food-insecure region. Over the last 40 years it has also been steadily losing its share of the global agricultural market. With less than 10% of SSA’s population, Thailand exports more food products than all SSA countries combined, and Brazil’s food exports are now 150% higher than those of SSA, although levels were similar in the 1980s. The “Green Revolution” that transformed tropical agriculture in Asia and Latin America largely bypassed Africa, with total factor productivity growth in agriculture lagging behind that of other regions in the world (Evenson and Gollin 2003) 1 . Two main factors are responsible. First, little land on the continent is irrigated. Only two percent of Africa’s renewable water resources are used, compared to a global average of five percent. Of the 183 million hectares of cultivated land in SSA, 95 percent is rain-fed and less than 5 percent benefits from some sort of agricultural water management practice—by far the lowest irrigation development rate of any region in the world. Moreover, of the 7.1 million hectares equipped with irrigation equipment, only 5.3 million are currently operational. Second, modern inputs and technological processes are grossly underutilized. Africa has, by far, the lowest rate of improved seed and fertilizer use of any region— a rate that has remained virtually constant for the last 40 years—and the lowest level of mechanization in the world. In consequence, African farmers have the lowest farm productivity; their grain yields only one-half of those achieved by Asian or Latin American farmers.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Poverty, and Economy
- Political Geography:
- Africa
18. Violent Extremism in Africa: Citizen Perspectives from the Sahel Epicenter and Periphery
- Author:
- Stephen Buchanan-Clarke and Sibusiso Nkomo
- Publication Date:
- 07-2016
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Afrobarometer
- Abstract:
- The Sahel is one of Africa’s most fragile regions and suffers from multiple longstanding and overlapping challenges, including entrenched poverty, underdevelopment, climate risks, and food insecurity. These chronic vulnerabilities have been exacerbated in recent years by the spread of a byzantine network of extremist and armed groups that have instrumentalized simmering local grievances and inter-community tensions to spread across the region’s porous borders. The fall of the Libyan regime in 2011 and the 2012 Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali were the genesis of ongoing instability in the region. Over the past decade, extremist and armed groups have continued to both entrench themselves in northern Mali and expand their operational footprint into Burkina Faso and Niger.2 Collectively, these three countries now constitute the core of the Sahel crisis (Cooke, Sanderson, Johnson, & Hubner, 2016). A variety of bilateral and multilateral military operations in Mali and across the wider Sahel region have been unsuccessful in stemming the violence, and since 2015, the number of terrorist attacks in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger has risen year on year (ACLED, 2019). The deteriorating security situation in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger has generated increasing concern among bordering West African states about the possibility of further regional spillover of conflict into their respective territories (United Nations, 2020a). This paper looks at the impact that violent extremist activity has had on citizens in the Sahel epicenter countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger as well as the periphery countries of Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Senegal, the Gambia, and Togo. Using Afrobarometer Round 7 survey data collected in 34 African countries between late 2016 and late 2018, it examines citizens’ perceptions of how governments are handling the violence and looks at potential vulnerability factors that may expose West African states to the spread of violent extremist activity, including governance performance, trust in institutions, civil liberties, and ethnic and religious tensions or marginalization. The security situation across the Sahel region is highly fluid. Burkina Faso, for example, has seen a rapid deterioration in security since fieldwork for the Round 7 survey was conducted, which would not be captured in the data presented below. However, the findings do provide an important snapshot of public opinion on a range of issues relevant to building more effective counter-terrorism policy.
- Topic:
- Security, Climate Change, Poverty, Food, and Violent Extremism
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Sahel, Northern Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso
19. Africa’s Growth Dividend? Lived Poverty Drops Across Much of the Continent
- Author:
- Robert Mattes, Boniface Dulani, and E. Gyimah-Boadi
- Publication Date:
- 01-2016
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Afrobarometer
- Abstract:
- Though Africa has recorded high levels of economic growth over the past decade, previous Afrobarometer surveys of citizens found little evidence that this growth had reduced levels of poverty in any consistent way (Dulani, Mattes, & Logan, 2013). However, new data from Afrobarometer Round 6, collected across 35 African countries, suggest a very different picture. While “lived poverty” remains pervasive across much of the continent, especially in Central and West Africa, we now see evidence that the decade of economic growth seems to have finally delivered broad-based reductions in poverty. “Lived poverty” (an index that measures the frequency with which people experience shortages of basic necessities) retreated across a broad range of countries. In the roughly three-year period between Round 5 (2011/2013) and Round 6 (2014/2015) surveys, our data suggest that “lived poverty” fell in 22 of 33 countries surveyed in both rounds. However, these changes show no systematic relation to recent rates of economic growth. While growing economies are undoubtedly important, what appears to be more important in improving the lives of ordinary people is the extent to which national governments and their donor partners put in place the type of development infrastructure that enables people to build better lives.
- Topic:
- Poverty, Infrastructure, Inequality, and Economic Growth
- Political Geography:
- Africa
20. Crisis and Opportunity in South Sudan
- Author:
- Princeton N. Lyman, Jon Temin, and Susan Stigant
- Publication Date:
- 01-2014
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- United States Institute of Peace
- Abstract:
- Ongoing negotiations to end the South Sudan crisis cannot simply return the country to the previous status quo. For lasting peace, the negotiating parties and mediators will need to reach beyond national political elites and those bearing arms and invite active involvement of the international community. South Sudan needs to build national cohesion and address fundamental issues of governance, democracy, and human rights. Restarting the stalled constitution-making process presents an opportunity to achieve these objectives. Following negotiations, a broad-based, inclusive, interim government that includes a degree of joint South Sudanese-international community administration and management should govern and ensure preparations for new elections.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Development, Poverty, Power Politics, and Fragile/Failed State
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Sudan