This dissertation consists of four essays in the economics of digital transformation and specifically considers the link between geography and digitalization in the know-ledge economy.

We investigate the impacts infrastructure investment has on the historical persistence of mistrustwithin Africa. We combine geocoded Afrobarometer survey data with infrastructure projectsfinanced by the Chinese government and its agencies. We show that these projects' presence doesnot diminish...

Rapid urbanization is a fact of live even in the least developed countries (LDCs) where the lion’s share of the population presently lives in rural areas and will continue to do so for decades to come. At the turn of the millennium 75% of the LDCs’ population still lived in rural areas and...

The body of literature on purely democratic countries can sometimes fail to explain the behavior of government in semi-democratic African countries. Empirical and theoretical political economic papers find that public funds target ruling party supporters and swing districts. Our results,...

Although growth has improved substantially in most African countries in recent years, poverty across the continent has fallen very little in the aggregate. There have been strong poverty reduction performances in some countries, but others exhibit higher poverty rates now than in 1990 despite...

Growth improved substantially in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) since 1990, but poverty in SSA as a whole has fallen by about a third, compared to by half or more in other developing regions. While some countries have had little or no success in reducing poverty, many have had...

Geography causes African countries to experience a ‘proximity gap’. To overcome this gap a ‘big push’ may be needed in infrastructure. The cross-border nature of such infrastructure requires regional cooperation in at least four issues: transport infrastructure, trade facilitation,...

In this paper, we develop a new index labelled the African Women Vulnerability Index (AWVI) with a focus on rural women using Round 7 of the Afrobarometer Survey. The AWVI comprises 59 indicators in six dimensions namely: safety, empowerment, health, education, economic prosperity and...

Service industries are increasingly important in international trade and offer additional paths to economic development. There are many opportunities to expand trade in services between South Africa and other African countries. Improvements in urban planning, design, and governance are vital to...