Transport

In recent years, a broad swath of African countries has begun to show a remarkable dynamism.  From Mozambique’s impressive growth rate (averaging 8% p.a. for more than a decade) to Kenya’s emergence as a major global supplier of cut flowers, from M-pesa’s mobile phone-based cash transfers to KickStart’s low-cost irrigation technology for small-holder farmers, and from Rwanda’s gorilla tourism to Lagos City’s Bus Rapid Transit system, Africa is seeing a dramatic transformation.  This favorable trend is spurred by, among other things, stronger leadership, better governance, an improving business climate, innovation, market-based solutions, a more involved citizenry, and an increasing reliance on home-grown solutions.  More and more, Africans are driving African development. 

The global economic crisis of 2008-09 threatens to undermine the optimism that Africa can harness this dynamism for long-lasting development.  In light of this, it might be useful to re-visit recent achievements.  The African Successes study aims to do just that.

The study will identify a wide range of development successes (see list), from which around 20 cases will be selected for in-depth study.  The analysis of each successful experience will evaluate the following: (1) the drivers of success—what has worked and why; (2) the sustainability of the successful outcome(s); and (3) the potential for scaling up successful experiences.  African success stories offer valuable insights and practical lessons to other countries in the region. 

I welcome your comments and suggestions for success stories. Click here to see the list of what we have come up with so far.

In low-income countries, road traffic accidents account for 3.7 percent of deaths, twice as high as deaths due to malaria.  Anyone who has traveled in Kenya won’t be surprised to hear that 20 percent of recorded crashes involve matatus, the private buses that careen around the city.  Billy Jack and James Habyarimana have a fascinating impact evaluation where they randomly put posters in matatus encouraging passengers to “heckle and chide” the driver if he is driving too fast or recklessly.  The idea is that the posters solve a collective action problem:  most passengers don’t like being driven dangerously, but individually they’re reluctant to speak up.  Their preliminary results are impressive:  the frequency of road traffic accidents in a 12-month period was one quarter in the treatment group compared with the control group (those without posters).

There are many factors which will impact Africa’s ability to weather the current economic crisis. Finding ways to reform trade policy that enhances private sector growth should be part of any strategy now and in the long-term to counteract the damage today’s economic crisis is having. As Shanta noted in his lecture in November at Columbia, private sector growth is a key priority for Africa. Policy, institutional, and other barriers, including trade restrictions need to be addressed. We recently examined the most important obstacles to trade facilitation in Africa. This included how increased port efficiency, improved customs, and regulatory environments, and upgrading services infrastructure could help that continent.  We found that improvement in ports and services infrastructure promise relatively more expansion in intra-African trade than other measures. These are the types of investments that can have a stimulus effect now and help over the long-term. Regional trade agreements have a positive effect on trade flows. Acting today to address infrastructure gaps and new commitments to reduce barriers through strong regional agreements should be part of any plans considered for reform in Africa.