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Publications (13)
– Lessons from international experience
Mozambique has seen a significant expansion of interest and investment in its extractive industries. New gas finds in the past ten years have led to expectations that these industries will contribute very significantly to the country’s future economic development and its long-term structural change...
Climate change is one of the most complex and urgent of global issues due to its potential impacts and the policies and measures needed to address those impacts. Both are potential game changers for the Earth’s biosphere, ways of life, and economic development into the twenty-first century and...
– How inflated expectations of oil revenues led to a deterioration in macroeconomic management
Prior to the discovery of oil, Ghana was one of the stars of the ‘Africa rising’ story, with an established track record of macroeconomic stability and fiscal discipline. When oil was discovered, there were great hopes that Ghana would avoid the ‘resource curse’. Initial signs were promising — the...
– Success and failure in the extractive sector
A central difficulty for extractive activity is that benefits accrue at the national level but disruptions are highly localized. Companies recognise that these imbalances need to be addressed and adopt active programmes to improve local benefits. These programmes have had mixed past success, partly...
Research Brief
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In Mali aid has had a positive impact on some areas of democratic consolidation such as strengthening the economy and civil society, election support and conflict resolution. Three significant structural problems were not addressed properly by donors; weak institutions of accountability, regional...
Research Brief
pdf
– A Trade-Off Between Governance and Democracy?
In Mozambique donors have shifted focus from project aid to budget support in an effort to reform the public sector and ‘justice, legality and public order’. While budget support has increased state capacity and helped Mozambique’s donor community find common ground, it has had a negative impact on...
Research Brief
pdf
Democracy assistance and donor support have been key in fostering a new type of civil society, dominated by NGOs, the legal community and churches. The bulk of donor funding to Zambia is channelled to the executive through budget support, this has the potential to increase the concentration of power...
Research Brief
pdf
– The Impact of Development Aid and Democracy Assistance
Development aid was effective in promoting democratic transitions during the 1990s in African countries beset by economic crisis domestic discontent, and a high dependency on aid. Development aid also influenced democratic transition indirectly through conditionalities that required unpopular...
Research Brief
In the WIDER Working Paper 'Ghana: The Limits of External Democracy Assistance' E. Gyimah-Boadi and Theo Yakah look at how donor assistance has helped support elections, parliament, political parties, civil society, and the media in Ghana. They argue that while donor assistance has had a positive...
Research Brief
– Achievements and Challenges
President Yayi Boni of Benin was one of the eight African leaders invited to attended the May 2012 G8 summit at Camp David to discuss the issue of food security. This is perhaps an indication that the country is doing something right, at least from the perspective of its donors in the developed...
Research Brief
– Democratic Consolidation in Africa
Foreign Aid and Democratic Development in Africa The past twenty years have seen donors increasingly linking foreign aid to democracy objectives in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the same period many countries in the region have adopted multi-party political systems, perhaps the minimum condition required...
Research Brief
Tanzania has been a relative success story in terms of African political reform. In the early 1990s Tanzania shifted from a one-party to a multiparty system, allowed greater freedoms for the press and civil society, and in 1995 held its first multiparty elections since 1962. The country has also...
Research Brief
On April 7 2012, following the death of President Mutharika, Joyce Banda was sworn in as Malawi's new president. Addressing parliament, President Banda made it clear that she intended to shake up Malawi, suggesting that she would repeal anti-homosexuality laws and take economic steps to improve...
Displaying 13 of 13 results