This article presents estimates of capital flight from 25 low-income sub-Saharan African countries in the period 1970 to 1996. Capital flight totaled more than $193 billion (in 1996 dollars); with imputed interest earnings, the accumulated stock of flight capital amounts to $285 billion. The...

In this paper, we explore the argument that one of the causes for the limited growth effects of trade openness in Africa may be the weakness of institutions. We also control for several major factors and, in particular, for export diversification, using a newly developed dataset on Africa....

The people of South Africa, and the African National Congress-led government, have made extraordinary social and economic advances since ending apartheid and beginning the transition to democracy in 1994. But the country still faces severe problems of mass unemployment, underemployment and...

This paper examines the question of whether inflation-targeting monetary policy is an appropriate framework for Sub-Saharan African countries. The paper presents an overview of inflation targeting, reviews the justification for the regime and summarises some major critiques. Monetary policy...

Corruption causes severe waste and misallocation of financial, human, and natural resources, thus retarding growth and social development. It suffocates private sector activity and entrepreneurship, perpetuating the dominance of an inefficient public sector, and undermining economic...

The authors discuss macroeconomic policies that would help African countries, especially the low-income countries, reach strong, sustained and shared growth in the post-crisis world. They review, with a special focus on LICs, macroeconomic policies in Africa prior to the crisis. The working...

While developing countries have made some progress in human development since the turn of the century, many are still lagging behind in important goals such as education, health, nutrition and access to clean drinking water and improved sanitation. Moreover, gender equity remains a major...

Donors and governments in aid recipient countries are under pressure to demonstrate effectiveness of aid, especially due to increasing stress on fiscal balances in the context of the global financial and economic crisis. The evidence on aid effectiveness remains mixed at best: while individual...

Limited access of entrepreneurs to credit constrains the creation and growth of private firms. In Africa, access to credit is particularly limited for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) due to unclear property rights and the lack of assets that can be used as collateral. This paper presents a...

This paper examines the role that institutions have played in the performance of African economies over the past decades. It discusses the institutional changes needed to enable African countries to reach inclusive development in the near future. The paper starts from the premise that growth and...