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Urban Poverty and Party Populism in African Democracies
By combining the perspectives of political elites with those of voters, this book provides a unique analysis of the dynamics of the party-voter relationship in Africa.
The Political Economy of Food System Transformation
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The current structure of the global food system is increasingly recognized as unsustainable. In addition to the environmental impacts of agricultural production, unequal patterns of food access and availability are contributing to non-communicable diseases in middle- and high-income countries and inadequate caloric intake and dietary diversity among the world's poorest. To this end, there have been a growing number of academic and policy initiatives aimed at advancing food system t...
African Youth and the Persistence of Marginalization
The much heralded growth and transformation of many economies in sub-Saharan Africa over the last decade continues to receive prominent attention in academic scholarship and among policy practitioners. An apparent feature about this transformation, however, is that Africa’s youth appear to have been left out. This book critically examines the extent and consequences of the marginalization of African youth. It questions conventional wisdoms about data trends, aspirational goals, and common policy interventions surrounding Africa’s youth that have been variously propagated in both the development studies literature and in mainstream donor policy reports. The book explores macro trends from...
African Development
The complexities of African development -- Part 1: Historical and political context -- The colonial legacy -- Big men, personal rule, and patronage politics -- Party systems and democratic trajectories -- Conflict, war, and state fragility -- Part 2: Core development questions -- Growth and transformation -- The political economy of policy reform -- The international aid system -- Debt and déjà vu? -- Poverty, health, and human development -- Demography, urbanization, and inequality -- Part 3: Regionalism and globalization -- The African Union and regional institutions -- World trade and late industrialization -- Private investment and the business environment -- Part 4: Conclusion -- Uncertainty and optimism
Strong democracy, weak state
What are the political and institutional prerequisites for pursuing policies that contribute to structural transformation? This paper addresses this question by focusing on Ghana, which has achieved sustained economic growth in recent decades and is broadly lauded for its environment of political pluralism, respect for human rights, free and fair elections, and vocal civil society. Yet, despite these virtues, Ghana remains unable to achieve substantial structural transformation as identified as changes in economic productivity driven by value-added within sectors and shifts in the allocation of labor between sectors. This paper argues that Ghana is strongly democratic but plagued by weak sta...
The politics and governance of informal food retail in urban Africa
Rapid urbanization in Africa south of the Sahara continues to highlight the importance of informal retailers as a source of both food and employment for the urban poor. The most recent Africa Agriculture Status Report emphasizes that, due to demographic and socioeconomic transformation in the region, the center of gravity of Africa’s food system is shifting to urban areas (AGRA, 2020). Informal retailers—including those who vend in open-air wet markets and hawk on pavements and streets—provide a critical link between agricultural producers and consumers. While the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically highlighted the vulnerability of this constituency (Resnick et al., 2020), informal trad...
Enabling environments for nutrition advocacy: A comparison of infant and young child feeding and food fortification in Nigeria
The importance of an enabling environment for effective nutrition advocacy is well-recognized, and several key elements of such an environment have been well-established in existing research. However, nutrition policies are multi-faceted, and advocates may target different elements of the policy process, from agenda setting to design to implementation. As a result, enabling environments are neither uniform nor static. Drawing on 66 interviews with a diverse group of stakeholders in Nigeria at the federal and subnational level, we examine some of the factors that have facilitated or hindered the ability of advocates to influence policy implementation in the domains of infant and young child feeding (IYCF) and large-scale food fortification. In doing so, we show the importance of considering the politics, institutions, and resources specific to discrete policy categories as well as the characteristics of the broader policy system in which advocates are operating. By working across these two levels, advocates can both be reactive to the prevailing enabling environment as well as proactively consider strategies for overcoming obstacles.
Political economy of wheat value chains in post-revolution Sudan
Wheat flour and bread have played a central role in Sudan’s political economy throughout the country’s post-independence history. In 2019, increasing bread prices precipitated the protests that ousted the government of Omar al-Bashir. How has Sudan’s recent political transition and economic circumstances impacted distortions within the wheat value chain? What are the policy preferences of relevant stakeholders for improving the affordability of wheat products and the productivity of domestic wheat farmers? This paper addresses these questions by drawing on key informant interviews in Sudan and utilizing a political settlements approach, which captures the underlying distribution of pow...
The political economy of reforming agricultural support policies
Agricultural support policies cost more than US$800 billion per year in transfers to the farm sector worldwide. Support policies based on subsidies and trade barriers are highly distortive to markets and are also regressive as most support is provided to larger farmers. On balance, the incentives this support creates appear to increase greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. In addition, some subsidies undermine the production of more nutrient-dense commodities that are otherwise critical for the improvement of dietary outcomes. This paper first highlights that better outcomes could be achieved if even a small portion of agricultural subsidies were repurposed into investm...
