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...

This paper analyzes the role of networks in the spatial diffusion of local economic shocks in Africa. We show that road and ethnic connectivity are particularly important factors for diffusing economic spillovers over longer distances. We then determine the key players, i.e., which districts are...

Scholars have typically explained the developmental performance of late-late developers through the analytical lens applied to East Asian developmental states, a lens that focuses on bureaucratic capacity and the bureaucracy's relationship with businesses and with society more broadly. In...

This paper extends the North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009) framework for understanding the problems of development. Our approach distinguishes two development problems that are normally conflated. Most approaches to development focus on the second problem, namely, the transition of societies from...

Why, after 30 years of aid, were so many African countries no better off in the 1980s than they had been at independence? Why, indeed, were so many of them slipping back and earlier economic achievements being undermined?Concentrating on Sudan, the Poverty of Nations examined what had gone wrong...

This paper investigates China's influence on local economic development in 37 African countries between 1997 and 2007. We compare the average changes in economic growth, migration, spatial inequality, and welfare of mineral-rich districts, both prior and after China's WTO Accession, to the...

This paper served as a background paper to the European Report on Development 2011/2012: Confronting scarcity: Managing water, energy and land for inclusive and sustainable growth. The European Report on Development was prepared by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in partnership with the...

This paper examines the uneven convergence between Indian development cooperation and the (so-called) ‘traditional’ development establishment. Using the case of Indian government concessional lines of credit (LoCs), handled by the Export–Import Bank, it demonstrates how diplomatic,...