This report focuses on growing trade in food staples in the Southern and Eastern African region of Africa as one of the largest growth opportunities available to African farmers. This paper examines the impact of regional trade in food staples, both for maintaining farmer incentives in surplus...

The paper provides a first, systematic benchmarking of infrastructure performance in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) countries (South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland) in four major sectors-electricity, water and sanitation, information and communication technology,...

More than 10 million people in southern Africa-Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swazilan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe-are currently threatened with famine, with the crisis being particularly severe in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The immediate causes of the food shortage, namely of maize, the region's...

Over the past few decades Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have tried various arrangements to promote economic integration. Most of these arrangements have focused on promoting greater intra-regional trade. Nevertheless, despite some increase in intra-regional trade in some of the groupings...

Rates of HIV infection in Southern Africa are reaching levels yet to be reported elsewhere in the world. HIV prevalence rates exceed 30 percent among pregnant women attending urban and peri-urban facilities in Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The highest prevalence rates of HIV infection...

This report discusses the patterns of foreign direct investment flows and trade-investment inter-linkages in Southern Africa. It will discuss how cross-border investment flows create a possible channel of growth spillover from South Africa and other MICs to LICs in the subregion, and identify...

This paper is a first attempt at documenting efficiency levels in Africa's electricity firms, their evolution and the sources of this evolution. The analysis is based on a sample of 12 operators providing services in the 12 country members of the Southern Africa Power Pool. We focus on the...

Education has a potentially important role to play in tackling the spread of HIV, but is there evidence that this potential is realized? This analysis combines the results Of previous literature reviews and updates them with the findings of recent randomized controlled trials and a discussion of...