The Political Economy of Aid Flows to North Africa

This paper provides an historical overview of aid flows to North Africa. It assesses the aid allocation process and argues that past aid flows to the region have been heavily influenced by donor political interests. This has reduced the effectiveness of aid which, with the exception of Tunisia, has not been associated with sustained economic growth. The Arab Spring provides an opportunity to reappraise aid flows to North Africa and it is argued that future flows need to support the democratization process, generate pro-poor growth, support social safety nets and address the pressing issues of widening inequalities and unemployment

Letter from Jaffrey, New Hampshire: business is kabooming

Begin with a glittering silver chrysanthemum, 1,000 feet wide, exploding over the Washington Monument on the Fourth of July. Proceed to Boston, where, with each cymbal crash of the "American Symphony," the pistils of giant red flowers strobe 1,000 feet above the Charles River. Take your pick of 700 other fireworks displays from Miami to Minnesota to Montreal. If you could follow a string of colored stars from all these productions back to their source, the trail would end at a tan, brick, and metal building on a rural road in southwestern New Hampshire. Here, behind a door guarded by jade lions, the 22 employees of Atlas PyroVision Productions choreograph the displays that illuminate the nation.Small business ; Manufactures ; New Hampshire

The Economic Impact of IMF and World Bank Programs in the Middle East and North Africa: A Case Study of Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, 1983-2004

This paper examines whether the economic reforms attached to IMF and World Bank policy-based lending in the Middle East and North Africa have stimulated sustained economic growth. In order to investigate this, we chose four countries to study in depth: Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. These were chosen as they have been put forward by both the IMF and the World Bank as successful reformers who, for prolonged periods, carried out World Bank and IMF guided economic reform programs. We examine the sources of growth during the reform period in these four countries, looking at intensive versus extensive growth, growth in the tradables sector versus the non-tradables sector and growth caused by the reforms versus growth caused by exogenous factors. We discovered that the reform programs in all four countries were associated with spurts of economic growth, but that, apart from Tunisia, this was not sustained, with intensive growth in the tradables sector stimulated by the reform program

Investment, Growth and Poverty: Lessons from Malawi and Madagascar on Re-taking the Middle Ground

Malawi is popularly regarded as a paradigm of African capitalism, having pursued an export-orientated, agriculturally-based development strategy in accordance with the dictates of international comparative advantage. Until the late 1970s, when the economy was derailed by exogenous shocks and poor policy response, the reward was almost two decades of rapid economic growth. Madagascar is often cited as an example of failed African socialism. Capital-intensive import-substituting industrialisation, nationalisation, a distorted incentive regime and over-extension of the state's economic apparatus contributed to three decades of declining per capita income in the post-independence period. Also by way of contrast, Malawi has pursued over a decade of largely uninterrupted stabilisation and structural adjustment programmes under the auspices of the IMF and World Bank, whilst Madagascar has been slow to respond to the macro-economic crisis facing many low-income LDCs in the 1980s. This book review article assesses two books on the economic experience of these two contrasting African economies

The Doubling of Aid to Africa: Promises and Problems

Although there is now a strong commitment to double aid to low-income countries, much work remains to be done to operationalise this in a way that maximises the effectiveness of the doubled aid flow. The quality of aid is as important if not more important than the quantity, and aid either poorly delivered or poorly utilised can lead to negative effects in the recipient country. This article focuses on some of the issues that will need to be resolved if the doubling of aid to Africa is to help propel the continent into self-sustaining growth in a manner compatible with achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The article looks firstly at the consensus that has emerged since 2002 regarding the way aid should be delivered and used. We refer to this as the Monterrey Consensus. We examine outstanding issues, including those concerning the possible negative returns to aid, problems of absorptive capacity defined in various ways, the modality of aid delivery, and the use of aid to build up foreign-exchange reserves. The next part of the article represents a more radical departure and questions aspects of the consensus itself. The final section offers a conclusion

Food Insecurity, Poverty and the Malawi Starter Pack: False Start or Fresh Start?

Chronic food insecurity and chronic poverty are closely related in Malawi. Since independence in 1964 national food security has been a key policy objective. However, until the 1990s less emphasis was placed on the household dimensions of food security and its links with chronic poverty. In the last decade a number of initiatives have been used in Malawi to tackle the issue of household food insecurity. One of the most controversial has been the Starter Pack programme launched in 1998. Initially consisting of a free handout of packs of improved maize seed, legumes and fertiliser to every small holder farm household in Malawi the scheme, under donor pressure, was subsequently scaled down to become a form of targeted social safety net programme. This paper analyses the strengths and weakness of both the original programme and its scaled down version and assesses the reason for the considerable opposition to the programme from Malawi’s donor community. Although Starter Pack is no longer operative in Malawi the Malawian experience is used to derive lessons for other countries where household food insecurity is an important dimension of chronic poverty.