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Abstract by the authors:Numerous sub‐Saharan African countries depend heavily on foreign aid. This paper explores the impact of foreign aid on economic growth in the continent using a finite mixture model. Contrary to previous studies, we hypothesise that the effect of aid on growth differs across groups of countries with similar but unobserved characteristics. The paper incorporates the potential presence of hidden heterogeneity and tries to explain group membership of countries by using various metrics of institutional variables. Focusing on a sample of 25 countries, we find that the impact of foreign aid on growth differs across three different groups of countries. Moreover, we find that aid works best in countries with effective government, good regulatory quality and low corruption. The results are robust to a battery of robustness checks. The paper underlines the importance of incorporating the heterogeneity in growth process in studies on aid effectiveness and provides evidence that sub‐Saharan African countries should undertake deep governance reforms to benefit from foreign aid.
Abstract by the authors: Motivation In the last decade, economic and political ties between China and African countries grew fast, fuelling a heated debate about the implications for the latter and for the global system of China's engagement in Africa. Purpose The article reviews the existing evidence on the nature, causes and impact of China's economic engagement in Africa. Approach and methods The review focuses mainly on the economic literature with a quantitative focus. Findings China's reasons to engage with Africa are not so different from those of western countries: securing natural resources and seeking new export markets. However, there is evidence that China is less interested in the quality of governance and institutions of its African partners. The literature tends to agree on the positive growth effects for African countries of Chinese interest, but also suggests that their already thin manufacturing sector could be adversely affected by Chinese competition and that the increasing natural resource specialization of African countries might hamper diversification, structural transformation and future growth prospects. At the same time Chinese investments are building valuable infrastructure and linkages with local firms, which are growing although still very limited. The emergent trend of increasing presence of small and medium Chinese firms in Africa is promising in this respect. Policy implications Increased Chinese interactions with African countries present opportunities as well as threats for African countries. A key aspect will be the capacity of Chinese presence in Africa to spread to the local economy through spillover effects and linkages to the domestic economy. Both sides should introduce policies aimed at strengthening these linkages and spillovers.
Abstract by the author: Monopolies continue to dominate world trade by controlling global production and distribution chains. Neither free trade nor fair trade has transformed this system; the recent rise in nativism and pseudo-protectionism has not, and cannot, address these problems either. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the largest free trade area in the world, promises to be different. AfCFTA rejects classical, neoclassical, and Marxist theories of trade, appealing, instead, to non-aligned pan-Africanism. It advocates continental free trade as a way to overcome the lingering effects of slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism. However, its exclusive focus on continental Africa, its disinterest in systemic redistribution, and encouragement of the private appropriation of socially created land rents prevents AfCFTA from achieving its goals. In fact, AfCFTA might actually foster inequality-- progress alongside of poverty--and in so doing, undermine the very essence of this trade regime. What Henry George (1886) called "true free trade," a theory based on making land common by socializing land rent, offers a more promising and powerful model through which to achieve the pan-African agenda. Indeed, only true free trade can definitively decolonize global trade.
Publisher's note: The European Commission has the legal right of initiative to propose both legislative and non-legislative actions, including in areas where competence is shared with the member states such as development policy. This article uses the case of ACP-EU relations to show the trade-offs between the Commission’s right of initiative to promote the European interest, and its own interests in the field of development policy. It presents detailed empirical observations of Commission-Presidency dynamics during the preparation of the Union’s negotiating mandate for ACP-EU relations after the expiration of the Cotonou agreement in 2020. In this process, the Commission had considerable control over the calendar and on the substance of Council Working Group exchanges, while the rotating Council Presidency had comparatively little influence on the process. Developments during the first half of 2018 increased political uncertainty and raise questions marks as to the longer-term effectiveness of the Commission’s post-Cotonou strategy.
Publisher's note: In 1975, the EEC and 46 former colonies of EEC member states concluded an aid-and-trade agreement that became the centrepiece of the EEC’s development policy; the Lomé I Convention. The milestone agreement was called ‘revolutionary’ and ‘a turning point in history’ and has been the subject of numerous studies, providing very different and contradictory interpretations. This study revisits this ‘drawing together of peoples of several continents’, presenting a study of primary data that became available with the opening of the archives on the Convention. The study finds that Lomé I was the result of intergovernmental and geopolitical dynamics: France and the UK were the main drivers behind the process, with other EEC members, especially Germany, hitting the brakes. The former metropoles aimed at maintaining their sphere-of-influence by concluding a Convention at EEC level that held the middle-ground between their respective relationships with ‘clients’ in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
Publisher's note: As a way of deepening democracy, the European Union (EU) has dedicated substantial financial and technical assistance to Cameroon’s civil society and election process. More than two decades after the adoption of multipartism, there is, however, the lack of a credible institutional framework for democratization in the country. This analysis of mainly primary sources draws on donor–recipient relations theory to provide a critical assessment of the EU’s aid to the democratization process in Cameroon. The article argues that the overemphasis on elections as a catalyst for orchestrating broader changes has instead given the Yaounde regime room to maneuver by failing to genuinely embrace democratization. Besides the worrying lack of institutional reforms, weaknesses embedded in the EU’s aid architecture and its member state’s self-interests have significantly compromised the effectiveness of its development assistance program in Cameroon and most of the Third World. The study suggests that the EU should recognize elections as a multifaceted process involving a complex cycle of myriad events and legal, technical, and organizational processes.
Publisher’s note: The EU considers the promotion of regional integration a central pillar of its relations with the rest of the world, and as constituting an important element in its identity as a new global actor. It aims to mold the international system into a “community” based on the success of its own model, and for that reason has strongly contributed to the development of regional integration in several regions across the globe. The EU investment in the African integration initiatives has been particularly immense. It has supported Africa’s regional integration “project” with significant financial and technical resources particularly for the administrative and security capacities of the African Union (AU) and its Regional Economic Communities (RECs). But analysts have noted how the Africa-EU relations have often been characterized by asymmetry of power and resources which has served to reproduce and reinforce pre-existing colonial linkages between former colonizers (e.g. Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the UK) and their former colonies in Africa, so that the relations have constituted little other than “a tool of hegemony, strengthening the influence of the old continent” [1] on Africa. Thus, the EU-Africa relations are said to have disintegrative effects on the Africa, undermining integration initiatives underway in the continent. This paper shows how the legacy of colonialism and its corollary of strong cleavages of former colonial powers, especially France, on their former colonies; the incongruence of EU interests with its stated objective of promoting regional integration and the objectives of local actors; the rigid pursuit of a formal, functional model of integration incompatible with the African political economy; and the EU’s inconsistency in the application of its stated policy instruments have conspired to undermine efforts at region-building in Africa. Thus, the paper observes that while regional integration is a ‘sine qua non’ for Africa’s socio-economic development, its place within the framework of EU-African relations must be reassessed, especially as the EU negotiates a new partnership agreement with the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries in anticipation of the expiry of the Cotonou agreement in 2020.
Publisher’s note: The externalisation of European Union migration governance disproportionately impacts states based on the African continent. Much of the analytical focus amongst existing research has been on the agency of the EU and its Member-states, identifying the asymmetric and postcolonial character of these policies, as well as highlighting that the imposition of European interests on African states risks undermining their own political stability. Yet, there is significant effort spent by actors on both sides of the Mediterranean on making African counterparts visible as an equal partner – an endeavour seen not just rhetorically within speeches, but also in the set-up of key institutional fora and their membership. The article approaches the framing processes involved to trace the legitimating basis of EU-Africa relations and the externalisation of EU migration policy to African states, highlighting how African political actors are positioned as participating in what is an EU-led process.
Publisher’s note: It is widely accepted that trade promotes economic growth and reduces poverty in both developed and developing regions of the world, including Africa. Trade is supposed to serve as a channel through which the participating countries utilize comparative advantages in their natural resource endowments and productive capacities. While trade among countries may generate growth globally, it is often the case that the aggregate benefits are not equitably distributed among the trading partners.This is evident in the case of the African continent, which is entirely dependent on the export of unprocessed raw materials and mineral resources to the developed and emerging Asian countries to power their economic growth.
The paper will analyse the current economic and trade relations between the EU and Africa in broad terms. Africa’s trade position is inherently weak as characterized by dependence on raw commodities for exports (with falling prices on the international markets) and a collapsing manufacturing sector necessitating the importation of basic consumer goods. Africa signed the interim Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) on tangible goods with the European Union (EU) negotiated under various RECs: e.g. the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) ECOWAS, SADC blocs. EPAs are supposed to facilitate the free trade agenda as the EU will offer Africa duty and quota-free access to EU markets and will similarly concede its market to EU exports (reciprocity). Thus, the economic partnership agreements are a threat to the industrialization strategy in African countries. British exit (BREXIT) from the European Union astonished the proponents of regional integration and free trade. African countries remain uncertain on the likely impacts of the BREXIT both within and outside the EU-EPAs context. Brexit will certainly reduce market access and development assistance to developing countries that signed EPA.
Abstract by the authors: The current migration and refugee crisis in Europe requires an understanding of the different migration drivers beyond the well-known economic determinants. In this article, we view migration from a broader human security perspective and analyze the determinants of regular and asylum seeker migration flows from Africa to Europe for the period 1990 to 2014. Our results show that, in addition to economic determinants, a combination of push and pull factors influences migration decisions of individuals. In particular, rising political persecution, human rights violations, ethnic tensions, political instability, and civil conflicts in African source countries are all significantly associated with increased migration flows into European destination countries. Therefore, our results underscore the need for the European Union and European countries to collaborate with the source countries, not only in terms of supporting economic development in the source countries but also in promoting human security: human rights, democracy, peace, and social stability
Abstract by the authors: Weak state capacity is one of the most important explanations of civil conflict. Yet, current conceptualizations of state capacity typically focus only on the state while ignoring the relational nature of armed conflict. We argue that opportunities for conflict arise where relational state capacity is low, that is, where the state has less control over its subjects than its potential challengers. This occurs in ethnic groups that are poorly accessible from the state capital, but are internally highly interconnected. To test this argument, we digitize detailed African road maps and convert them into a road atlas akin to Google Maps. We measure the accessibility and internal connectedness of groups via travel times obtained from this atlas and simulate road networks for an instrumental variable design. Our findings suggest that low relational state capacity increases the risk of armed conflict in Africa.
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