Financial depth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been uneven over the last two decades. The WAEMU countries are lagging behind other regions, particularly the High Growth Non-oil Exporters (HGNOEs) group. We use two complementary methodologies to compare the two groups of countries. In a panel of...

Estimates of the current and future structure of employment in sub-Saharan Africa (2005–20) are obtained based on household survey estimates for 28 countries and an elasticity-type model that relates employment to economic growth and demographic outcomes. Agriculture still employs the majority...

This paper examines the determinants of net interest margins in four regional blocks in Sub-Saharan Africa and one comparator block in the Eastern Caribbean. Using bank-level data, we find that countries with a high level of operating costs, a high ratio of equity to total assets and high...

This Selected Issues paper focuses on the challenges of small middle-income countries (MIC) in sSub-Saharan Africa (SSA) comprising Cape Verde, Namibia, and the Kingdom of Swaziland. The IMF report summarizes the analytic underpinnings that support the IMF staff’s advice on policies to...

Multidimensional peacekeeping has drawn the United Nations (UN) into state-building, and missions have taken on significant responsibilities for good governance. Since it aims at transforming states from fragile post-conflict situations into inclusive, well-governed societies, multidimensional...

This article examines the interrelationships between public spending composition and Uganda’s development goals including economic growth and poverty reduction. The authors utilize a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to study these interrelationships. These results demonstrate...

A plethora of strategies and initiatives have been proposed to address the development deficits in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, the resulting analyses have failed to converge on the actual causes of these shortfalls and to identify optimum solutions. As a result, disparities between the...

This article critically examines the fight against HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the epidemic revealed its devastating power when neoliberalism emerged as a dominant force in economic and development thinking, it investigates how policies like SAPs have affected the severity of the epidemic...

The recent literature on aid effectiveness suggests the presence of non-linear effects as well as other country-specific effects in the aid-growth relationship, which may explain the different findings in the empirical literature. We argue that even after correcting for the above, the focus must...

This article identifies the anti–corruption strategies used in developing countries and assesses their relevance to the newly independent country of Eritrea. The anti-corruption strategies considered in this article are divided into four broad categories: Economic/Market Reforms,...