1,720,969 research outputs found
Greg Mill, Jeffret Herbst, Olusegun Obasanjo and Dickie Davis, Making Africa Work: A Handbook (London, Hurst, 2017), pp. 320, ISBN: 9781849048736
No full textFrom fields to factories: Special economic zones, foreign direct investment, and labour markets in Vietnam
Full text linkhttp://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100006456 Federal Ministry of Economic Co-operation and Developmen
Digital Africa: How Big Tech and African Startups Are Reshaping the Continent
Full text linkOver the past two decades, Africa has become increasingly connected as more and more Africans gained access to the internet and mobile phones. Building on this enhanced connectivity, a new wave of African startups has emerged, tackling some of the continent's biggest challenges with "homemade" digital technologies. There are growing signs that these new technologies could provide a leapfrogging opportunity for Africa. Africa has seen massive improvements in internet access and mobile phone adoption, due to investments in the continent's digital infrastructure, particularly mobile broadband networks. At the same time, there are significant connectivity gaps between Africa and the rest of the world as well as between and within African countries. These may widen as Africa's digital infrastructure faces capacity pressures from a rapidly expanding internet user base. Tech giants, primarily from the United States, have recognised a business opportunity in Africa's existing connectivity gaps and have begun investing heavily in subsea data cables, data centres, and technology hubs. It is critical that these investments bridge Africa's connectivity gaps - a growing body of evidence shows the wide-ranging positive socio-economic impacts of improved internet and mobile phone access. Africa's enhanced connectivity has led to the emergence of a new wave of growth-oriented technology startups, building innovative and "homemade" digital technologies for widespread use. Digital platforms in particular are increasingly disrupting Africa's major, mostly informal service, retail, and agricultural sectors. Anecdotal reports suggest that digital technologies from African startups can be transformative for individuals, businesses, and farms, but there is very little systematic empirical evidence on their local impacts. Such evidence is urgently needed to harness their full potential for inclusive economic development in Africa. As Africa's digitalisation accelerates, African governments must develop policies that simultaneously harness the benefits of new technologies and ensure that lagging countries and segments of society do not fall further behind. Policies should incentivise private investment in Africa's digital infrastructure and encourage entrepreneurship and innovation, while preventing unregulated new technologies from harming consumers. In addition, digital skills need to be strengthened to prepare African countries for the coming digital century
Formalization and productivity: Firm-level evidence from Viet Nam
No full textUsing a firm-level panel dataset on private small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Viet Nam's manufacturing sector, this paper examines productivity dynamics of formal and informal firms. We decompose productivity changes into changes within and between formal and informal firms. We assess the contributions of firm entry and exit as well as informal-formal transitions. Our results show that productivity is considerably lower and misallocation more prevalent in the informal than in the formal sector. Yet, formalizing firms in Viet Nam make an important contribution to aggregate productivity growth among manufacturing SMEs, growing faster than other firms and increasing efficiency. We identify two 'regimes' of formalization. Until early 2010, more productive (previously) informal firms formalize. Policy changes and accelerated formalization then alter the characteristics of formalizers, as less productive firms become formal. While this formalization wave depresses average formal total factor productivity growth, the overall productivity effect is positive
Africa's emergent tech sector: It's characteristics impact on development and labour markets
No full textThis study investigates the characteristics of Africa's tech sector, its digital services, and its impact on economic development, specifically on labour markets. Our literature review and new analyses based on a database of African startups shows that Africa's emergent tech sector is adapting to the continent's constraints on development and, sometimes, contributes to overcoming them. A case in point is the credit constraints that numerous startups have overcome to attract very significant amounts of capital. Tech startups tend to be concentrated in financial services in the "Big Four": Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria. We show, first, that "home-grown" African platform businesses do not simply connect demand and supply, but also invest in logistics and infrastructure; second, that many tech firms offer multiple products that complement the original service; and third, that business models often rely on large networks of agents. We conclude that more evidence on the impact of digital technologies is needed
Africa's Emergent Tech Sector: Characteristics and Development Implications
Full text linkThis study examines the characteristics of Africa's tech sector and its implications for development. Using a database of technology firms in Africa, we show that start-ups are increasingly attracting funding across Africa, especially in underdeveloped sectors such as finance, retail, and transportation. We then illustrate that African start-ups’ digital technologies are often tailored to local contexts to attract, connect, and retain customers. Finally, we discuss transmission channels and review the existing evidence on the impact of digital technologies, particularly platforms, in Africa. We conclude that digital platforms hold significant development potential by addressing key market and government failures, as documented for the expansion of mobile money, but that the impact of other platforms, such as e-commerce, may be more ambiguous than expected. Consequently, there is an urgent need for more evidence on the impact of emerging digital technologies on African individuals, firms, and farms to guide effective policy responses
Promoting private investment to create jobs: A review of the evidence
No full textThe promotion of private investment, in particular in the form of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), has been a key component of economic development strategies since the early 1990s. Recent development policy initiatives, for example the G20 Compact with Africa (CwA) but also Germany's "Marshall Plan with Africa", put re-renewed emphasis on mobilizing foreign private capital for accelerated economic growth and, most importantly, the creation of productive employment at scale. This emphasis rests on two important assumptions: First, it assumes that FDI is conducive to economic development through technology transfer, increased productivity and additional jobs - at least when it comes as greenfield investment. Second, it assumes that government policies can be successful in attracting FDI to achieve those benefits. Both developed and developing countries have "redcarpet policies" in place, which - in developing countries - are often supported by bilateral donors and multilateral institutions: governments provide special tax treatment and subsidies to foreign investors, have established special economic zones and investment promotion agencies, seek to mobilize private finance through blending, and improve the investment climate, for example by negotiating investment treaties. The present study reviews the empirical evidence that puts to test these two assumptions. After presenting a conceptual framework we systematically review the vast empirical literature on the ramifications of FDI in developing host countries with a focus on employment effects. This part of the study is followed by an assessment of the empirical evidence on the impact of different investment promotion instruments on FDI inflows and subsequent development outcomes, again emphasizing employment outcomes. As the review will show, direct estimates of the cost-effectiveness of FDI promotion policies are scarce. Yet, taken together, the two parts of this study allow for insights as to whether the effects on FDI flows and the subsequent development, in particular employment, effects are quantitatively large enough to justify the costly efforts of governments to attract FDI. In a last part, we therefore discuss the policy implications of the reviewed evidence
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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