Growth will accelerate for net oil exporters and weaken slightly for oil importers, strengthening the trends projected in African Economic Outlook 2006. For the oil importers, moreover, inflation is moving to double-digit levels. Budget deficits in oil-importing countries appear to have...

The Centre has highlighted in particular four areas where OECD countries can make a difference: maintaining a stable macroeconomic environment with affordable interest rates; helping to mitigate risks; enhancing trade opportunities through improving the coherence of their own policies ;and...

Education is one of the most important drivers of economic growth. The benefits of education go beyond the academic, contributing to economic objectives such as growth and productivity, as well as to social goals such as health and social cohesion. In a highly competitive, globalised world...

Transport infrastructure has been dangerously neglected in recent times. Lack of transport infrastructure impedes economic integration and poverty reduction. Involving the private sector in financing the transport infrastructure is proving harder than anticipated.

Fast-growing African countries are attracting private equity and risk capital as never before. The conditions attracting private investors are likely to improve.

The financial crisis should give a new impetus to governments’ efforts to improve aid effectiveness. Over the last few months, the governments of OECD countries have pledged trillions of dollars in loans, guarantees, capital injections, and other assistance in their coordinated effort to prop...

With the recent boost of emerging economies in African economic relations, a different philosophy of development co-operation is progressively gaining momentum. Indeed, there are critical differences in the way development co-operation is provided by traditional and emerging partners. For the...

The use of governance indicators, as applied to developing countries, has grown spectacularly in recent years. Following the maxim that you cannot manage what you cannot measure, international investors and official development aid agencies, together with academics and the media, have turned...

Is the social contract in Latin America broken? Many authors have suggested this is the case, given the high levels of inequality, the low levels of taxation and the low quality of public services observed in the region. This paper analyses empirically the relationship between fiscal policy,...

Support for regional economic integration in Africa runs high amongst the continent’s international development partners and African elites. However, its expression in European forms of economic integration is not appropriate to regional capacities and in some cases may do more harm than good....