African Economic Development: Measuring Success and Failure
April 18 – 20, 2013
Simon Fraser University
Harbour Centre
The World Bank Chief Economist for Africa, Shanta Devarajan, recently declared that the state of development data in Africa amounts to nothing less than a statistical tragedy. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that, due to data unreliability, we know little about the growth and income of African economies. Yet institutions and scholars routinely make statements regarding the pace and direction of development in Africa.
Recently, there has been an increased focus on the weakness of statistical systems in sub-Saharan Africa. The remarkable upward revision causing a doubling in GDP in Ghana has just been confirmed, and reports suggest that a similar upward revision of GDP is pending in Nigeria. These very visible events have raised the attention given to African statistics, especially for the measurement of growth, poverty and also for development in African economies in a broader sense.
The conference seeks to establish the extent of the data problems and the implications for both academic interpretations and policy advice. As well as fully setting out the problems, the main task is then to suggest improvements or alternatives that can advance our understanding of African economic development and provide active guidance for policy makers. Specifically this conference invites producers of data (the local statistical offices in African countries); disseminators of data (representatives from World Bank and the IMF); and data users such as development scholars and International development organizations. The conference also unique brings together scholars from different disciplines, including history, economics, economic historians, political scientists, anthropology and sociology. Bringing these types of data users together will generate a productive and innovative basis for remedying the problems of development statistics.
The conference runs over three days with three specific themes:
Day 1: Statistical Tragedy in Africa? Evaluating the Data Base for African Economic Development
Day 2: Measurement, Planning and the State in Sub-Saharan Africa: Historical Perspectives
Day 3: New African Economic History: Sources and Methods in Analyzing Long Term African Economic Development
Special Events:
Friday April 19, 6 pm: Book launch. Morten Jerven, Poor Numbers. How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do about It. (HC1900)
Saturday April 20, 10 am: Keynote. Anthony Hopkins, New African Economic History.
Thursday 18 April, 2013
The Data Base for African Economic Development 20 years on: What have we learned?
It has been generally acknowledged that there are serious problems of measurement relating to developing economies. Recently, however, there has been an increased focus on the weakness of statistical systems in sub-Saharan Africa in particular. The remarkable upward revision of GDP in Ghana has just been confirmed, and reports suggest that a similar upward revision of GDP is pending in Nigeria. These very visible events have raised the attention given to African statistics, especially for the measurement of growth, poverty and also for development in African economies in a broader sense. The gravity of these concerns has led the Chief Economist for Africa at the World Bank, Shanta Devarajan, to recently declare a statistical tragedy in Africa. Further indication of the widespread concern is that the issue has been taken up in the popular media. There is currently a vigorous scholarly debate regarding whether our current indicators are misrepresenting trends in growth, poverty and wealth, particularly of the past two decades. In sum, this calls for an evaluation of the database for development in sub-Saharan Africa. This selection of papers by scholarly experts and policy practitioners clearly describes the extent of the problem, discusses how it affects our current understanding and interpretation of African development, and finally, the papers all consider how the problem should be addressed – in terms of how to use the current data, how to develop alternative data methods, and finally how statistical capacity in African economies can be improved
Friday 19 April, 2013
Measurement, Planning and the State in Sub-Saharan Africa: Historical Perspectives
Do African States have the capacity for ‘Development’? In the contemporary literature African states are either described as incapable or uninterested in development, but these notions have not been fully historicized. This panel discusses the role of planning and measurement in African development in historical perspective. The employment of planning techniques and statistical tools, both during colonialism and after independence, has been and still is, crucial for designing and implementing development policies and assessing the economic performance of African countries. Specifically, drawing both on the historical experience of Ghana, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Tanzania and on more general reflections on the changing role of economics and statistics to represent African economies and govern them, the panel, composed by economic historians and historians of science, assesses the economic, political and cultural implications of planning and statistics. It is claimed that a historical analysis of planning and statistics in Africa is an important step in building a bridge between area studies and other disciplines such as economics and economic history, and that these historical experiences have bearings on contemporary development policy.
Confirmed papers by: Morten Jerven (SFU), Gerardo Serra (LSE), Joseph Morgan Hodge (West Virginia University), Alden Young (Princeton), Stephanie Decker (Aston), Felicitas Becker (Cambridge), Boris Samuel (Sciences Po)
Saturday 20 April, 2013
New African Economic History: Sources and Methods in Analyzing Long Term African Economic Development
African Economic History has been invigorated by new and innovative studies of Africa’s long-term development, particularly from the work of economists. The aim of this session is to stimulate discussion on future challenges and opportunities in the field African economic history. The lack of reliable and consistent data over time is perhaps the most fundamental challenge for the practice of African economic history. The paucity of reliable time series data on African economic development complicates the evaluation of the economic importance of key historical events such as the slave trade, the colonial impact, as compared to ‘initial conditions’ of geography. Furthermore, when considering the relative importance of types of ‘legacy’, a lack of comparable evidence further impairs our ability to assess the impact of different paths of development taken since independence.
Economic growth or development can be measured by conventional methods like historical national accounts or external trade data, but may carry different types of bias and measurement problems. In response different proxies have been suggested like data on rainfall or heights, while yet another route is to gauge development through documented institutional change, like property rights in land and labour. We are calling for research that offers ways of interpreting of long-term economic development in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Africa. We also welcome papers of a historiographical nature, focussing on the disentangling of causal mechanisms of economic development and social change. Innovative approaches to existing empirical data or new research that unravels new sources of data for analysis are particularly welcome.
Detailed Program:
Thursday 18 April
The Data Base for African Economic Development 20 Years on: What Have We Learned?
9:00-10:30am – Panel 1: Africa’s Statistical Tragedy: Poverty, Income and Growth
Morten Jerven (SFU) – Introductory Remarks
Rodrigo Garcia Verdu (IMF) – The Evolution of Poverty and Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa over the Period 1980-2008: What Do We (and Can We) Know Given the Data Available?
Deborah Johnston (SOAS) and Alexandre Abreu (University Technique of Lisbon) – Asset Indicies as a Proxy for Poverty Measurement in African Countries: a Reassessment
11:00am-12:30pm – Panel 2: Africa’s Statistical Tragedy: Poverty, Income and Growth
Chair: Deborah Johnston (SOAS)
Justin Sandefur and Amanda Glassman (Center of Global Development) – The Mystery of African Development: Exploring Systematic Discrepancies between Survey and Administrative Data
Sara Randall (UC London) and Ernestina Coast (LSE) – Poverty in African Households: the Limits of Survey Representations
Andrew Dabalen (World Bank) – Is Poverty Reduction in Africa Underestimated Because of Poor Data?
1:30-3:30pm – Panel 3: Surveying Labour and Agriculture
Chair: Sara Randall (UC London)
Louise Fox (World Bank) and Obert Pimhidzai – Different Dreams, Same Bed: Collecting, Using, and Interpreting Employment Statistics in Sub-Saharan Africa – The Case of Uganda
Matteo Rizzo (SOAS) and Marc Wuyts – The Invisibility of Wage-Employment in Statistics on the Informal Economy in Africa: Causes and Consequences
Gero Carletto (World Bank) and Dean Jolliffe (World Bank) and Raka Banerjee – Improving Household Survey Data on Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa
Chris Cramer, Deborah Johnston, Carlos Oya, John Sender and Bernd Mueller (SOAS) – How to do (and how not to do) Fieldwork on Fair Trade and Rural Poverty
4:00-6:00pm Panel 4: Monitoring Human Capital Development
Chair: Alex Moradi (Sussex)
Roy Carr-Hill (Institute of Education, London) – Measuring Development Progress in Africa: the Denominator Problem
Robert McCaa (University of Minnesota) – Human Development Index-like Small Area Estimates for Africa Computed from IPUMS-International integrated Census Microdata
Abebe Shimeles (African Development Bank) – The Making of the Middle Class in Africa: Evidence Based on Demographic and Health Surveys
Andrew Dabalen (World Bank) – Collecting High Frequency Panel Data in Africa Using Mobile Phone Interviews
Friday 19 April
Measurement, Planning and the State in Sub-Saharan Africa: Historical Perspectives
9:00-10:30am Panel 5: Economic Planning in Newly Independent States
Chair: Felicitas Becker (Cambridge)
Gerardo Serra (LSE) – Towards a Political Economy of Statistics: A Study of Household Budget Surveys in the Gold Coast, 1945-1957
Joseph Morgan Hodge (West Virginia University) – Development and Twentieth-Century Colonialism in Africa: A Short History
Alden Young (Princeton) – The Military and National Income Accounting in Sudan: The Search for Legitimacy, 1959-1964
11:00am-12:30pm – Panel 6: The Use of Numbers in Politics
Chair: Gerardo Serra (LSE)
Felicitas Becker (Cambridge) – The Bureaucratic Performance of Development in Colonial and Post-Colonial Tanzania
Boris Samuel (Sciences Po) – Economic Calculations, Instability and (In)formalization of the State in Mauritania, 2003-2011
Dwayne Woods (Purdue) – The Use, Abuse and Omertà on the Noise in the Data: African Democratization, Development and Growth
1:30-3:00pm – Panel 7: Reports from the Statistical Offices
Chair: Elizabeth Cooper (SFU)
Yemi Kale (National Bureau of Statistics) – National Bureau of Statistics and the Reset of the Nigerian Statistical System
Magnus Ebo Duncan (Ghana Statistical Services) – National Income Accounting Revision in Liberia? The Weakness of the Statistical Infrastructure Exposed
Moffat Nyoni (Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency)-Adjustments for GDP Exhaustiveness in Zimbabwe
3:30-5:00pm – Panel 8: Between Statistical Tragedy and Renaissance
Chair: Ewout Frankema
Johannes Jütting (Paris21 and OECD) – MDGs, Post 2015 Development Framework and Statistics: What to do?
Dimitri Sanga (UNECA) – The Challenges of the Narrative of African Countries’ Development: Data Demand and Supply Mismatches
Ben Kiregyera (African Centre for Statistics) – The Dawning of a Statistical Renaissance in Africa
6:00pm – Book Launch
Morten Jerven – Poor Numbers How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do about It
Saturday 20 April
New African Economic History: Sources and Methods in Analyzing Long Term African Economic Development
10:00-11:00am – Keynote: Tony Hopkins – The New Economic History of Africa
11:00am-12:00pm – Panel 9: Sources and Methods
Gareth Austin (Geneva) – Beyond Old and New in the Study of African Economic History: A Critical Survey of Sources and Methods
Patrick Manning (Pittsburgh) – African Population, 1650 – 1950: New Estimates by Region
1:00-3:00pm – Panel 10: Colonial States, Investment and Growth
Chair: Gareth Austin
Ewout Frankema (Utrecht) and Marlous van Waijenburg (Northwestern) – Endogenous Colonial Institutions: Lessons from Fiscal Capacity Building in British and French Africa, 1880-1940
Erik Green (Lund) – Growth and inequality in a bimodal colony – a dialectic interpretation of Southern Rhodesia
Ellen Hillbom (Lund) and Jutta Bolt (Groningen) – Social Structures, Standards of Living, and Income Distribution in Colonial Bechuanaland Protectorate
Alex Moradi (Sussex) – Colonial Investments and African Development: Further Evidence from Railroads in Kenya
3:30pm-5:30pm – Panel 10: Commerce and Merchants
Chair: Tony Hopkins
Joseph Inikori (Rochester) – The Development of Commercial Agriculture in Pre-Colonial West Africa
Kofi Asante (Northwestern) – Collusion, Collaboration/Cooperation and Conflict: How Indigenous Gold Coast Merchants Shaped State Formation in the Gold Coast, 1850-1950
Chibuike Uche (Enugu) – The Nationalization of Lonrho’s Business Interests in Tanzania
6:00pm – Conference Closing.