Poor Africa
| Introduction | People | Projects | Statistics |
The people of Africa have been left behind by global development. Research into the causes of poverty may yet help them to catch up.
Why are people poor? And how can countries lift themselves out of poverty? These questions are particularly acute for many African countries. Oxford is ranked among the top five institutions in the world for studies of development economics, with Africa as an important focus. For more than a decade the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) at Oxford University has been addressing the particular problems of how to alleviate poverty on the African continent.
Since 2007 the CSAE has linked up with a variety of research centres in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Uganda, the UK and Ethiopia to understand which types of institutions will sustain pro-poor growth in developing countries.
To take advantage of growth opportunities well-designed institutions are essential. They can help countries avoid some of the potential growth pitfalls such as substantial natural resources and having access to coasts.
The work at the CSAE is based on the observation that there is no one-size-fits-all type of institution that will sustain growth. Rather institutions should and do vary with the opportunities and geography of different countries.
Research into institutions at the CSAE currently focuses on institutions for rural transformation and development, institutions for manufactured exports and institutions for accountability. The research uses both globally available data, for example on political change, and in-depth country analyses of particular institutions based on specially collected survey data.
Stefan Dercon, the Africa coordinator for this research says: “This programme of research will help politicians and other decision makers make informed decisions about institutional designs based on rigorous academic analysis.”
Inspired by the writings of Nobel laureate and former Drummond
Professor of Political Economy at Oxford Amartya Sen, the Oxford
Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) was set up within the
Department of International Development in 2007 under director Dr
Sabina Alkire, to develop new measures of poverty that take into
account people’s lived experience. The initiative is supported
by private philanthropists, Canada’s International Development Research
Centre, the Canadian International Development Agency, the UK’s
Department for International Development, and AusAID. It aims to
complement poverty data on health, education and consumption with data
on violence, shame, disempowerment and unemployment, and to press for
the adoption of insightful multidimensional measures of poverty by
governments and other actors.