Recent years have seen a sustained research effort exploring the African development experience. The extant literature has offered a large set of explanations as to why the African development record has lagged behind that of other regions of the developing world. This new volume brings international contributors together to focus on the role of growth and institutions. First, it provides brief evidence on the growth and institutional records, as well as on development outcomes, during the post-independence period. Second, it targets certain growth determinants, including industrial embeddedness, innovation, exchange rate regimes, and environmental quality. Third, it sheds light on the dynamics and distribution of growth, and on growth-enhancing sectors of the economy. Finally, it investigates several issues of institutional development, as well as institutions generating development outcomes. Though focused on these two key areas, the coverage strives to achieve a comprehensive analysis of how Africa’s development may have been enhanced or undermined and to offer lessons for the future. This volume is essential reading for all scholars of development economics and development studies.

This first edition explores the dynamics of growth, jobs, and inequalities. It proposes ten decisive actions to promote sustainable economic and social development and to strengthen institutions in Africa.

In a sweeping survey of African economies, leading scholars offer the latest research into the biggest current influences on African growth and development, taking account of relevant institutional contexts as well as significant or unique problems that have slowed Africa’s progress.

Studies of African economic development frequently focus on the daunting challenges the continent faces. From recurrent crises to ethnic conflicts and long-standing corruption, a raft of deep-rooted problems has led many to regard the continent as facing many hurdles to raise living standards. Yet Africa has made considerable progress in the past decade, with a GDP growth rate exceeding five percent in some regions. The African Successes series looks at recent improvements in living standards and other measures of development in many African countries with an eye toward identifying what shaped them and the extent to which lessons learned are transferable and can guide policy in other nations and at the international level. The first volume in the series, African Successes: Governments and Institutions considers the role governments and institutions have played in recent developments and identifies the factors that enable economists to predict the way institutions will function.

In recent years, Africa has undergone the longest period of sustained economic growth in the continent’s history, drawing the attention of the international media and academics alike. This book analyses the Africa Rising narrative from multidisciplinary perspectives, offering a critical assessment of the explanations given for the poor economic growth and development performance in Africa prior to the millennium and the dramatic shift towards the new Africa. Bringing in perspectives from African intellectuals and scholars, many of whom have previously been overlooked in this debate, the book examines the construction of Africa’s economic growth and development portraits over the years. It looks at two institutions that play a vital role in African development, providing a detailed explanation of how the World Bank and the IMF have interpreted and dealt with the African challenges and experiences. The insightful analysis reveals that if Africa is rising, only 20-30 per cent of Africans are aboard the rising ship, and the main challenge facing the continent today is to bring on board the majority of Africans who have been excluded from growth. This book makes the complex, and sometimes confusing debates on Africa’s economic growth experience more accessible to a wide range of readers interested in the Africa story. It is essential reading for students and researchers in African Studies, and will be of great interest to scholars in Development Studies, Political Economy, and Development Economics.

In this book, Franklin Obeng-Odoom seeks to debunk the existing explanations of inequalities within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world using insights from the emerging field of stratification economics. Using multiple sources - including archival and historical material and a wide range of survey data - he develops a distinctive approach that combines traditional institutional economics, such as social protection and reasonable value, property and the distribution of wealth with other insights into Africa's development. While looking at the Africa-wide situation, Obeng-Odoom also analyses the experiences of inequalities within specific countries; he primarily focuses on Ghana while also drawing on experiences in Botswana and Mauritius. Comprehensive and engaging, Property, Institutions, and Social Stratification in Africa is a useful resource for teaching and research on Africa and the Global South.

The paper investigates empirically the determinants of economic growth for a large sample of sub-Saharan African countries during 1981-92. The results indicate that (i) an increase in private investment has a relatively large positive impact on per capita growth; (ii) growth is stimulated by public policies that lower the budget deficit in relation to GDP (without reducing government investment), reduce the rate of inflation, maintain external competitiveness, promote structural reforms, encourage human capital development, and slow population growth; and (iii) convergence of per capita income occurs after controlling for human capital development and public policies.