Africa’s agriculture faces varying climate change impacts which mainly worsen production conditions and adversely affect its economies. Adaptations thus need to build the resilience of farming systems. Using “resilient adaptation” as a concept, this study analyses how adaptations at farm...

This study traces the interactions between economic growth, income inequality and consumption poverty in a sample of African countries during the 1990s. It draws on the much-improved household data sets now available in the region. It finds that experiences have varied: some countries have seen...

Aphorisms that "Rising tides raise all boats" or that material advances of the rich eventually "Trickle Down" to the poor are really maxims regarding the nature of stochastic processes that underlay the income/wellbeing paths of groups of individuals. This paper looks at the implications for the...

This paper argues that official development assistance (foreign aid) is partly responsible for the lack of structural change in Africa. Africa's development partners have devoted too few resources and too little attention to two critical constraints to private investment, infrastructure and...

Many low income countries in Africa are optimistic that producing biofuels domestically will not only reduce their dependence on imported fossil fuels, but also stimulate economic development, particularly in poorer rural areas. Skeptics, on the other hand, view biofuels as a threat to food...

This paper describes changes over the past 15-20 years in non-income measures of wellbeing—education and health—in Africa. We expected to find, as we did in Latin America, that progress in the provision of public services and the focus of public spending in the social sector would contribute...