Results for “africa”

1079 found

Dani Rodrik reports:

South Africa has undergone a remarkable transformation since its
democratic transition in 1994, but economic growth and employment
generation have been disappointing.  Most worryingly, unemployment is
currently among the highest in the world. While the proximate cause of
high unemployment is that prevailing wages levels are too high, the
deeper cause lies elsewhere, and is intimately connected to the
inability of the South African to generate much growth momentum in the
past decade.  High unemployment and low growth are both ultimately the
result of the shrinkage of the non-mineral tradable sector since the
early 1990s.  The weakness in particular of export-oriented
manufacturing has deprived South Africa from growth opportunities as
well as from job creation at the relatively low end of the skill
distribution.  Econometric analysis identifies the decline in the
relative profitability of manufacturing in the 1990s as the most
important contributor to the lack of vitality in that sector.

Here is a non-gated version of the paper.  The bottom line is that South Africa is de-industrializing. 

Charitable organizations have long made it possible to sponsor a child in a poor country.  Kiva lets you sponsor a business in a poor country.

By choosing a business on our website and then lending money online to
that enterprise, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world’s
working poor make great strides towards economic independence.
Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can
receive monthly email updates that let you know about the progress
being made by the small business you’ve sponsored. These updates
include reports on loan repayment progress, photos of new capital
equipment, narratives on business growth and standard of living
improvements, and more. As loans are repaid, you will get your original
loan money back.

Kiva has recently been discovered by the web and so they are currently out-of-businesses to sponsor (which is a good sign), but it’s a great idea and I intend to sponsor a business as soon as one becomes available.

Thanks to Pablo Halkyard for the pointer.

Here is an encouraging development from Africa:

In most of Africa, there is no such help for informal workers like Ms. Sow, who sells ndambe, a hearty bean paste that she mixes with tomatoes and onions and slathers on bread. Across the continent, fewer than 10 percent of working people have health insurance, pension coverage or other forms of social security, according to the International Labor Organization, the United Nations’ oldest specialized agency.

But that is slowly changing, and not just because some African governments are expanding their ailing social security systems, vestiges of the colonial days and geared mostly to the vast number of people on the government payroll.

The bigger push is coming from everyday Africans who are tired of waiting for politicians to address their needs and have begun spinning their own safety nets.

Plans in which neighbors come together and create their own makeshift health coverage are the rage in Africa, particularly in the continent’s west. Here, the plans now have a significant presence in 11 countries and membership has grown beyond 200,000 people.

Some of these mutual health organizations, as they are known, include fewer than 100 beneficiaries. The tiny group negotiates with a local clinic and forges a better price for care. Others have linked dozens of community groups to produce sophisticated plans that cover 10,000 or more people and offer an array of services.

"Every day there’s a new group," said Olivier Louis Dit Guerin, who helps set up these microinsurance plans as part of a program run by the Labor Organization. "They’re growing and growing to fill the big gap."

Here is the story.

This settlement in western Kenya, where Ms. Odera lives, has become
a giant test tube, and Ms. Okoth’s instruction is one part of that
experiment. Eventually there will be 10 such test villages, scattered
across the world’s poorest continent.

Led by Jeffrey Sachs,
director of the Earth Institute of Columbia University, the project
aims to fight poverty in all its aspects – from health and education to
agriculture and energy in one focused area – to prove that conditions
for millions of people like Ms. Odera and her neighbors can be improved
in just five years.

It is an important and uncertain gambit. If
it fails, initiatives like that pushed recently by Prime Minister Tony
Blair of Britain to greatly increase foreign aid to Africa may seem
foolhardy. If a single village cannot be turned around with focused
attention, how can whole communities and even countries be revitalized?

…The researchers behind the program are keeping track of every penny
they spend, trying to demonstrate that for a modest amount, somewhere
around $110 per person, a village can be tugged out of poverty.

They
have tried to measure exactly how bad Sauri was at the start of the
project last fall. Every home was surveyed to get an accurate portrait
of the population. Blood tests were taken among a smaller group for a
nutritional analysis, because many villagers eat only once a day, and
show it.

Blood will also be tested to determine how widespread
the malaria parasite is, and then again later, to see whether the
mosquito bed nets given to every villager help keep more people,
especially children, alive.

Here is the New York Times story.  Here is my earlier post on Sachs’s plan.  Here is an on-line World Bank discussion about when foreign aid works and doesn’t; they invite MR readers to join in.

More than 40 percent of the South African workforce is without a job and nearly 60 percent of those who are jobless have never worked. The NYTimes is correct that South Africa faces many problems including poorly educated workers, AIDS, and crime. But it is not true that South Africa is doing poorly “despite [it’s] sound economic policies.” In particular, if you read to the 22nd paragraph you find this buried lede:

In other developing countries, legions of unskilled workers have kept down labor costs. But South Africa’s leaders, vowing not to let their nation become the West’s sweatshop, heeded the demands of politically powerful labor unions for new protections and benefits. According to a study conducted in 2000 for the government’s finance department, South Africa’s wages are five times higher than Indonesia’s, even though its workers are only twice as productive.

To the great detriment of its people, South Africa’s leaders have been successful. South Africa is not the West’s sweatshop.