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This chapter examines the role of business networks in market development and community formation in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is shown that for firms above a minimum size, relational contracting is the rule in markets for agricultural products, and manufacturing inputs and outputs. The important roles of relationships in facilitating market exchange are documented. The role of community affiliation in the membership of business networks is then examined. It is argued that entry into existing networks is biased, and that referral by family and friends is the most likely cause of ethnic concetration.

This chapter explores a final category of states: weak, failing, and failed states. It focuses on the states in the sub-Saharan African region, based on a belief that the African continent contains more weak states than any other region and, therefore, offers sufficient diversity in terms of cases. On the whole, the weak, failing, and failed states category presents mixed evidence for the globalization school. These states clearly have changed the type of wars they fight, and have reached out to nonstate actors and institutions to help them achieve their security objectives. In addition, there does indeed seem to be an increase in non-traditional security threats in sub-Saharan Africa, although traditional interstate threats persist. The majority of the states in the region, though, have not reduced their armed forces or defense expenditures, nor have they abandoned traditional security concerns to address new threats. Furthermore, they continue to pursue strategies at odds with the prevailing view of globalization, including hard-balancing against regional opponents and military offense.

The last two decades have witnessed an increase in globalizing influences affecting most countries, Africa included. These influences have arisen partly as a result of domestic and international policies, such as trade policies, and partly as a result of general globalizing impulses, such as technological developments and enhanced communications. The single overarching objective of this chapter is to outline the macro‐evidence on the extent to which globalization is taking place and poverty is reducing in Africa, and to consider this to both characteristics of the region (i.e., within the region) and relative to other global regions. It draws on some of the most recent evidence about the globalizing processes in various forms so as to try to determine the speed and extent of globalization in Africa. This helps to put into proper perspective the impact of globalization on poverty and inequality. It is essentially a partial and descriptive approach, at best indicative of associations, and stops short of attempting to identify, empirically, channels of influence and causal relationships.

This chapter examines the state of food security in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), based on analysis of a selection of indicators of food security and nutritional well-being during the period 1990-2002 within the context of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture. It argues that it may be advisable for those SSA countries with both static and dynamic comparative advantage in agriculture to pursue policies towards ‘food self-sufficiency’ as a means to attain food security, considering their large rural farming population, at least until such time that international trade in agriculture is fully integrated into the WTO disciplines. This is particularly relevant in view of the fact that high agricultural protectionism in the north currently distorts price signals and thus the opportunity costs of allocating factors of production in these economies. The SSA countries that lack comparative advantage in agriculture may want to aim for a ‘food self-reliance’ strategy to attain food security.

The effects of several different land tenure systems particularly on insurance and on equity, and some of the non-market mechanisms of land allocation have often been ignored by economists, except perhaps in some attempts to understand the implications of these on wealth distribution of inheritance practices, specifically in primogeniture. Non-market mechanisms play no small part in land allocation across developing countries, and it is important to note that one of the most frequently used methods of this in African countries is inheritance. As such, we have to be aware of how these non-market mechanisms evolve when agricultural commercialization and population growth increases land pressure. This chapter looks into how inheritance practices and rules vary across different cultures and social classes through comparing the situation of Sub-Saharan Africa with the those in Europe's the lower rural classes.

This chapter focuses on the analysis of the role of grandparents in ageing Sub-Saharan Africa. It observes that Africa is beginning to re-discover and apply what had worked in the past in terms of building tacit intergenerational relationships in an era of globalisation. It focuses on emerging patterns of distorted family relations and their coping strategies with the ‘missing generation’ in the middle as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It focuses mainly on introducing new trends in grandparenting, while the pandemic is decimating the region's human capital.

This chapter explores the science associated with climate induced migration. Humans have always migrated in response to a complex array of stimuli and “forcings.” Despite the historical precedents, chapter 2 takes seriously the natural scientific evidence that climate change has accelerated in the twentieth century because of anthropocentric contributions and that climate change will deepen further in the twenty-first century. As a result, migration patterns are likely to change profoundly. CIM is a worldwide phenomenon and obviously an issue for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) confronting rising sea levels. (SIDS were first recognized as a diplomatic entity at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro.) CIM is also salient in South Asia, especially in Bangladesh on an annual basis and, for example, in Pakistan in the aftermath of the August 2010 floods. Nonetheless, this book drills into the geographical space associated with African migration to Europe and its implications for governance and transit states. Much of the population movement ostensibly directed toward Europe emerges from the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa. Changing temperatures and precipitation patterns are likely to affect migratory pressures in the region. And since Africa is geographically proximate to Europe, it is the most immediate concern for North Atlantic interests. Importantly, however, chapter 2 emphasizes that while climate change may continue to contribute to CIM, most migrants within the region move short distances because adverse environmental conditions reduce access to the resources they need to migrate. The research on migration in the Sahelian and sub-Saharan context is that, paradoxically, climate change may inhibit long-range migration. So while CIM pressures to the Mediterranean and Europe are hardly insignificant, the bulk of CIM’s impact has been, and will likely remain, felt south of the Sahara—not on North Atlantic borders.

The contrast between export processing zones and Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa is striking. In a number of Asian countries, EPZs and related zones have generated millions of jobs, significant foreign exchange, backward, forward and demand linkages, self-generating capital accumulation, training and technological spillovers, and significant local spin-offs and co-ownership opportunities. Most zones in Africa have remained rather small, with few linkages to the local economy and small foreign-exchange earnings. The paper investigates the reasons for this. The main problem is that many zones in SSA have been driven by aid agencies with promises of special access to foreign markets which have proven to be quite limited particularly after the expiration of the Multi Fibre Arrangement in January 2005. In addition, the vision has been driven by the rather faulty theoretical notions in World Bank policy papers and elsewhere, that EPZs are simply second-best solutions to the total liberalization of economies. In contrast, in many of the successful export zones in Asian countries, EPZs have been part of a broader industrial policy where zones are not an end in themselves but a component of the broader strategy to transforming institutions to improve developmental competitiveness and industrialize the country.

Statute law and the property rights that are actually enforced in common law Africa often diverge. Property rights are tied to authority structures, and in Africa both property and authority structures are contested. Early theoretical perspectives on property, those of Locke, Rousseau, and Proudhon, understood the inherent political nature of property rights. Yet, this linking of property and authority is often lacking in contemporary analyses of property and development. The last half of the chapter discusses contemporary theory on property rights and the “fallacy of legalism.” A brief overview of the variety of property rights enforcement mechanisms we see in Africa is presented, along with a set of criteria by which we might evaluate social institutions.

The chapter focuses on the lessons that Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) can learn on issues of employment policy from the historical experience of the East Asian pioneers. An essential characteristic of that experience was the high employment intensity of growth. It begins with a comparative analysis of the differences and similarities between SSA today and the East Asian pioneers when they embarked on their historical growth path in employment and labor market characteristics. After highlighting the meaning and role of high employment intensity in promoting efficient and inequality-averse growth, it examines the extent to which the SSA economies have succeeded in putting in place the institutions, development policies, and incentive systems that are conducive to high employment intensity of growth. Noting the diversity among the SSA countries, it concludes by identifying some broad areas of commonality among them with respect to these aspects of development.

This chapter examines the IMF's relationship with Sub-Saharan Africa, explaining the political pressures which have shaped the Fund's engagement with countries on the continent. It explores the way powerful donor countries have affected this relationship from both within and from outside the IMF, as well as non-governmental organizations. Within these political forces, the IMF has struggled to shape economic programs for its borrowing members. Equally challenging for the institution has been negotiating politics within borrowing countries. As a result the institution faces two powerful ongoing challenges: reconciling greater ‘ownership’ by its low-income borrowers with the mission defined by its most powerful shareholders; and working out the relationship of its work to that of the World Bank and other institutions in an increasingly complex aid architecture.

This chapter looks at the history of romantic love in Sub-Saharan Africa. This text comes from a lecture given at the British Academy's 2009 Raleigh Lecture on History. This text attempts to explore some of the methodological and theoretical issues involved in an historical study of love in Africa. It argues that romantic love in Africa is not simply an extension of an imperialist cultural and political project and that emotional regimes cannot be divorced from economic circumstances. It explains that though the configurations of interest and emotion take specific forms in African societies, there is nothing peculiarly African about the evident need of individuals to balance realism and idealism in their emotional lives.

This chapter examines the treatment of aid to Sub-Saharan Africa in programs supported by the IMF's Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), along with relevant Fund policies and communications. It builds on an evaluation by the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office — The IMF and Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa — which explored the validity (or not) of three external criticisms. The first is that PRGFs blocked the use of aid through overly conservative macroeconomic programs. The second is that PRGFs lacked ambition in projecting and identifying opportunities for the use of aid, which may in turn have tempered donors' actual provision of aid. The third is that PRGFs focused little on poverty reduction and growth. The chapter also explores the institutional drivers for Fund behavior and the disconnectedness identified in the evaluation between the Fund's rhetoric on aid, poverty reduction, and the Millennium Development Goals, and its operational practices.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, changes in the high rate of HIV/AIDS infection, economic instability, unemployment, and religion were spurred by the rise of African independent churches to the current popularity of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity and Catholicism. To be able to understand these, it is necessary to consider the religious world-view and the place of religion within the socio-political shifts in this area. This chapter, hence, uses religion as a social variable in order to gauge and understand why people act collectively. It examines some of the salient issues featured in the early sociological study of religion and shows how these have influenced the way that religion has been studied in Africa. It also examines the way in which contemporary Christianity and African religions have been studied and proposes ways to include religious variables in the broader study of societies in postcolonial Africa.

This chapter examines the efficacy of food-for-work (FFW) programmes, drawing on empirical evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa. FFW programmes perform effectively under a set of conditions: when these are carefully planned and implemented, when they provide short-term insurance against shocks, and when private market demand for labour fails to provide a vent for surplus labour released by those who suffer shocks. FFW is also effective in reaching vulnerable persons in areas with low rates of chronic illness or injury.