Africa's Pulse, Fall 2014

Africa's Pulse, Fall 2014
ISBN-10
1464804680
ISBN-13
9781464804687
Category
Economic development
Pages
48
Language
English
Published
2014-11-24
Publisher
World Bank Publications
Author
Punam Chuhan-Pole

Description

Africa’s Pulse is a biannual publication containing an analysis of the near-term macro-economic outlook for the region. It also includes a section focusing on a topic that represents a particular development challenges for the continent. It is produced by the Office of the Chief Economist for the Africa Region.This issue is an analysis of issues shaping Africa's economic future. Growth remains stable in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some countries are seeing a slowdown, but the region's economic prospects remain broadly favorable. External risks of higher global financial market volatility and lower growth in emerging market economies weigh on the downside. In several Sub-Saharan African countries, large budgetary imbalances are a source of vulnerability to exogenous shocks and underscore the need for rebuilding fiscal buffers in these countries. The Ebola outbreak is exacting a heavy human and economic toll on affected countries and, if not rapidly contained, the risk of wider contagion grows. Without a scale-up of effective interventions, growth would slow markedly not only in the core countries (Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone), but also in the sub region as transportation, cross-border trade, and supply chains are severely disrupted. In Sub-Saharan Africa, growth in agriculture and services is more effective at reducing poverty than growth in industry. Structural transformation has a role to play in accelerating poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. Increasing agricultural productivity will be critical to fostering structural transformation. Boosting rural income diversification can facilitate this transformation, as well. Investments in rural public goods and services (for example, education, health, rural roads, electricity and ICT), including in small towns, will be conducive to lifting productivity in the rural economy. Although Sub-Saharan Africa's pattern of growth has largely bypassed manufacturing, growing the region's manufacturing base, especially by improving its fundamentals, lower transport cost, cheaper and more reliable power, and a more educated labor force, will benefit all sectors.

Similar books

  • Economic Development
    By Jan S. Hogendorn

    See Richard N. Cooper , “ Resource Needs Revisited , ” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity , Washington , D.C. , 1975 , pp . 238–245 . Cooper notes that the technical and managerial changes were often a response to higher prices and ...

  • Managing without Growth, Second Edition: Slower by Design, not Disaster
    By Peter A. Victor

    6.2.3 Nuclear Wastes 'Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter', said Lewis L. Strauss, chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission in a speech to the National Association of Science Writers on 16 ...

  • Global Institutions, Marginalization, and Development
    By Craig Murphy

    ... Brazil (UNGA 1946: 89) (including a speech by later UNCTAD official and member of the innovative Pearson Commission, Roberto de Oliveira Campos [UNGA 1948: 168-169]), India (UNGA 1947: 46), and Lebanon, by George Hakim proposing the ...

  • Tourism Development and the Environment: Beyond Sustainability?
    By Richard Sharpley

    Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd. Hall, C.M. (2005) Tourism: Rethinking the Social Science of Mobility. Harlow: Pearson Education Hall, ... Harlow: Prentice Hall Hall, C.M. and Higham, J. (2005) Tourism, Recreation and Climate Change.

  • Peddlers and Princes: Social Change and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns
    By Clifford GEERTZ

    3 K. Polanyi, C. M. Arensberg and H. W. Pearson, Trade and Markets in the Early Empires (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1957). Only a minority of Balinese hamlets are thus specialized, of Economic Development in Tabanan , 89.

  • Working Women Into the Borderlands
    By Sonia Hernández

    In Working Women into the Borderlands, author Sonia Hernández sheds light on how women's labor was shaped by US capital in the northeast region of Mexico and how women's labor activism simultaneously shaped the nature of foreign investment ...

  • Explorations in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics: Essays in Honor of Gardner M. Brown, Jr
    By R. Halvorsen, Gardner Mallard Brown, David Layton

    This volume contains an excellent set of papers by top scholars in environmental and resource economics. These papers span the wide range of topics that characterized the extraordinarily broad and productive career of Gardner Brown.

  • Economics and the Environment
    By Eban S. Goodstein, Stephen Polasky

    ... Martin, 418 Baker, Dean, 361 Balint, Peter, 393 Balmford, Andrew, 186,403 Banesh, Melanie, 244 Barnes, Peter, 13, ... 357–358 Chester, Mikhail, 360 Choate, A. L., 335 Choi Granade, Hannah, 344 CIEL, 407 Ciriacy-Wantrup, S. V., ...

  • City in Transition
    By Frank Akpadock

    Journal oftheAmerican PlanningAssociation, 56: 3-8., Hoover, E. M. 1971. An Introduction to Regional Economics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf., Hoover, E.M. and Giarratani, F. 1984. An Introduction to Regional Economics, 3rd Edition.

  • Geography: People and Environments
    By Stuart Currie, Jeff Battersby

    This text studies patterns of work across the world and considers the main economic development themes, by examining the issues affecting people living in different economic environments.