Publications (46)

How does wartime victimization shape victims’ political attitudes in the long run? We argue that violence increases politics’ salience to victimized communities, which in turn increases these communities’ political awareness and evaluation of governance quality decades after war has ended. We...

Low levels of broadband penetration combined with poor quality of services present a challenge to growth and development in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). This paper performs a comparative analysis of the competitive dynamics of telecommunications markets in four SADC countries...

The objective of this research is to assess the extent to which export processing zones in Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe integrate the Sustainable Development Goals in their implementation and operations. We focused on four Sustainable Development Goals—gender equality, decent work...

Special economic zones (SEZs) in Africa are generally regarded as underperforming relative to their peers in the rest of the world. This study focuses on the design features of the SEZ in Africa that may help explain this underperformance. Literature was reviewed to identify the key design...

Zimbabwe’s persistent economic challenges since the early 1990s have been largely attributed to unpopular political decisions at the expense of building productive capacity in different sectors of the economy. Using a global value chains framework taking into account political economy dynamics, this...

This paper documents the construction of a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Zimbabwe in 2013. The SAM was built using National Accounts data from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT), including balance of payment data, government finance data, and highly aggregated industry-level...

This paper investigates the levels and evolution of poverty in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe using the decomposability properties of poverty measures based on a counting approach. We compare poverty measures such as the Alkire and Foster index with alternative poverty indices that are...

Since 2000, Zimbabwe has been under some pressure to provide more fully for its children. It is not clear whether child poverty has worsened, although AIDS, drought, and economic mismanagement have all compromised poverty reduction. In any case, child poverty has come under increased scrutiny, in...

Rapid urbanization and rising income levels in Southern Africa have increased the consumption of perishable and processed food products. This paper relies primarily on firm-level interview data to assess competition and bottlenecks in transporting time-sensitive perishable products across borders...

Efficient transport links are critical to enhancing the integration of markets in Southern Africa. This paper assesses the structure of markets, competition, and prices and costs of road transportation between urban hubs in Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Key findings are...

This paper considers findings of studies analysing the development of a regional animal feed to poultry value chain in southern Africa (Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe). The southern African regional poultry value chain is underdeveloped, although important changes include investments by...

Since the early 2000s, there has been rapid growth in the number and spread of supermarkets in southern Africa. This paper is a synthesis of key findings of studies undertaken in Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe on the expansion of supermarkets and the impact this has had on suppliers...

This paper explores the linkages between the national systems of innovation of Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and their respective mineral extraction and mineral processing value chains, including input industries. Our analysis reveals four individual national systems of innovation...

This paper explores the potential to leverage large-scale mineral extraction in Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe to foster mineral beneficiation and upstream industries. The evidence suggests that the success or failure of a resource-based industrialization approach is country and sector specific...

The animal feed to poultry value chain in the southern African region has seen rapid demand growth owing to increases in urbanization. This growth has been accompanied by the increase in co-ordinated investments by large, predominantly South African, firms across the region. We examine the...

Over the past two decades, southern African countries have experienced rapid growth in the number and spread of supermarkets. Several factors have been attributed to this growth, including increasing urbanization, increased per capita income, the rise of the middle class, economies of scale and...

China’s importance as a major donor outside the traditional Western donors has been increasing and this has helped to bridge the funding gaps in developing countries. At the same time, South-South financial assistance still comes with less conditionality making China’s aid model different to Western...

This paper uses five life histories from three locations in Zimbabwe—one peri-urban, one urban and one rural—to provide a window on current processes of impoverishment and adverse coping. Each case and location highlight key aspects of Zimbabwe’s recent economic and political turmoil. Together the...

The paper considers the impact of livelihoods oriented agricultural service provision for smallholder farmers on gender relationships and food security. The paper contents that the democratization and liberalization of agricultural services towards participatory, bottom-up approaches, from the early...

Using data from a 2004 household-based survey of children, we examine differences between boys and girls in self reports of food insecurity in Zimbabwe. Previous studies have taken only the views of the household head into consideration in categorizing the food insecurity status of the household. By...