Author: Development Matters

Intensifier les possibilités d’emploi dans les systèmes alimentaires pour les jeunes et les femmes en Afrique de l’Ouest

Development Matters Africa, Building resilience, Employment, Food security, Français, Policy , , , , ,

Par Koffi Zougbédé, Secrétariat du Club du Sahel et de l’Afrique de l’Ouest

Read this post in English

En 2011, Fatoumata Cissoko, jeune femme vivant en Guinée et diplômée en comptabilité, a lancé sa société de transformation de fruits secs avec 260 USD. Elle produit environ 16 tonnes d’ananas séché par an vendu dans de nombreux magasins et supermarchés de la capitale, Conakry, et d’autres villes du pays. Récemment, sa société a considérablement accru sa capacité de production pour améliorer sa compétitivité sur les marchés régionaux et internationaux. Fatoumata a également ouvert un restaurant bio pour compléter la chaîne de production et elle emploie directement 15 femmes. L’histoire de Fatoumata est un exemple des nombreuses opportunités d’emploi émergentes dans les systèmes alimentaires d’Afrique de l’Ouest.

Activités non agricoles – une multitude de possibilités d’emploi diversifiées              

L’économie alimentaire régionale, premier employeur d’Afrique de l’Ouest, devrait atteindre 480 milliards USD en 2030, le secteur non agricole représentant 49 % de la valeur ajoutée. En conséquence, la demande de main-d’œuvre dans les activités non agricoles se développe principalement dans les zones urbaines – pour la transformation, la commercialisation et d’autres services tels que les repas pris à l’extérieur du domicile. Ces activités sont susceptibles de créer des emplois décents et permanents, en particulier pour les jeunes et les femmes. Environ 68 % des femmes occupant un emploi travaillent dans l’économie alimentaire et, comme Fatoumata, la plupart d’entre elles évoluent dans des segments non agricoles.

Continue reading →

Urban migration and COVID-19: Cities on the frontline of an inclusive response and recovery

Development Matters New social contract, Reviving international co-operation ,

By Samer Saliba, Head of Practice, Mayors Migration Council

Photo: Manoej Paateel / Shutterstock

The international community is not doing enough to financially support those who are doing the most for migrants, refugees, and internally displaced people during this global pandemic: city governments. While many cities have the mandate to serve people in vulnerable situations, including migrant and displaced residents, they often do not have enough financial resources to meet the increased demand and need of new arrivals. Lost revenue due to the economic impacts of COVID-19 will further curtail cities’ ability to deliver critical services to their residents this year. Some estimates suggest city governments could see revenue losses of up to 25 percent in 2021, precisely when their spending needs to increase to pay for recovery efforts and continuously growing populations. In a recent survey, 33 municipal finance officials in 22 countries across all continents reported already seeing a 10 percent decrease in their overall revenue and around a five percent increase in expenditure. This “scissors effect” of local government revenue and expenditure will be most felt in cities in developing countries. African cities, for example,  could potentially lose up to up to 65 percent of their revenue in 2021.

While the international community is paying more attention to municipal finance in relation to climate change, sustainable development, and urban development in general, the same cannot be said of urban migration and displacement. Few municipal finance mechanisms focus explicitly on financing for urban migration and displacement, despite the fact that the majority of migrants and displaced people reside in cities. Moreover, donors with low risk tolerance often disregard city governments in low to middle-income countries. In response to the unmet needs of cities, my organisation, the Mayors Migration Council (MMC), recently launched the Global Cities Fund on Inclusive Pandemic Response supporting five cities to implement inclusive response and recovery programmes of their own design.

Continue reading →

Significant but insufficient progress in financial support for developing countries

Development Matters New social contract ,

By José Antonio Ocampo, Professor at Columbia University and former UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and Finance Minister of Colombia

Recent events and particularly last week’s meeting of the Bretton Woods institutions have generated significant advances in international financial co-operation, particularly in support of developing countries. The latter is crucial, as a large number of low and middle-income countries continue to be severely affected by the COVID-19 crisis while the economic recovery underway is very uneven, as underscored by the IMF in its World Economic Outlook.

The first good news was the agreement to issue $650 billion dollars in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), the IMF’s global reserve asset. Close to two-fifths of the new SDRs would engross the reserves of developing countries. It remains to be agreed how the unused SDRs, particularly from developed countries and China, would be lent or donated to special funds to support low-income countries, and there is no agreement on how they could also be used to support middle-income countries.

The second good news was the endorsement by the US of a global effective minimum tax in the context of the negotiations taking place in the OECD Inclusive Framework on BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting). There is still a need to agree on what the tax rate would be and the criteria for determining the tax base: whether sales, as the US has suggested, as well as other criteria, particularly resource use and employment that would benefit developing countries, as the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT) has suggested.

Continue reading →

For greater vaccine equity, first fix these misconceptions

Development Matters Covid-19, New social contract ,

By Philip Schellekens, Senior Economic Advisor, World Bank Group 

As we start to see the light at the end of the pandemic’s dark tunnel, inequities in the distribution of vaccines across countries are coming under intense scrutiny. Unequal vaccine distribution is not necessarily unfair—after all, some population groups are more vulnerable than others. Yet relative to sensible metrics of need, the current inequality is excessive. Efforts to boost and balance deployment have galvanized under the clarion call for #VaccinEquity, but progress has been slow and marred by bottlenecks.

In addition to the various practical constraints—including financing, logistics, manufacturing, and patent rights—three misconceptions stand in the way: the view that COVID-19 is mainly a “rich-country disease”; a focus on herd immunity that detracts from the pressing goal of protecting the global priority group; and a belief that fixing vaccine hoarding in rich countries will fix vaccine equity on its own.

A global snapshot of vaccine inequity

Competing interests in diplomacy, economics, and global health shape the international distribution of vaccines, but overshadowing them all are universally recognized ethical principles that center on “need” and “priority for the disadvantaged.” Needs encompass a fuzzy spectrum. They include the burden of morbidity (e.g., long COVID), broader health effects (e.g., undermanaged illnesses), and wider socioeconomic effects (e.g., food security and poverty). But as long as this pandemic rages on, needs will first and foremost be defined by the vulnerability to premature death—which not only is devastating but also irreversible and hence hard to compensate for.

Continue reading →

“Green” transition and innovation in public institutions: an urgent research and policy agenda

Development Matters Green transition ,

By João Carlos Ferraz, Associate Professor, Institute of Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

New economic activities may be required for the sustainable, competitive and inclusive development trajectory of a nation. But in their early stages, the economic attractiveness of many of these new activities is unknown. Uncertainty prevails as investment projects have no track record of costs and returns, demand is not guaranteed, and the institutional framework may not be consolidated. In short, infant industry challenges may apply, which is when new policy and public institution practices should come into play. And increasingly, emerging societal development challenges like climate change, are creating a pressing need for innovative policy solutions.

But what is innovation in public institutions? Policy innovations may come in diverse shapes and forms; they can be new solutions to address a pre-existing challenge or alternative approaches to tackling an emerging one. Some may result in short-lived experiences (pilot projects that are never scaled up); others can be both immediately relevant and long lasting. Drawing from Schumpeterian literature, policy innovation can be defined as changes in processes – including organisational procedures – and products that a public agency offers to society. For policy beneficiaries, these are product innovations, but, when taken up, they imply process changes in the recipient organisation. Moreover, policy innovations can be of radical or incremental nature depending on the extent of the changes they imply for policy benefactors and beneficiaries. Nonetheless, a necessary pre-condition for the emergence and application of any type of innovation is the mobilisation of dynamic policy capabilities.  

Continue reading →

Dewi’s story: discriminatory social institutions hold women back in Southeast Asia

Development Matters Gender, Women and Girls , ,

By Pierre de Boisséson, Economist, OECD Development Centre and Alejandra Meneses, Policy Analyst, OECD Development Centre

Human development relies on three fundamental building blocks — health, education and income. A recent report from the OECD Development Centre shows that in Southeast Asia, women’s human development remains severely constrained by discriminatory social institutions, in other words, formal and informal laws, practices and social norms. These socially and culturally embedded norms, attitudes and behaviour limit women’s ability to control and make decisions on their own health, education and access to labour opportunities. Dewi’s story is especially telling.

Dewi’s teen pregnancy: putting her health at risk and her life on hold

Dewi is 16. She lives with her family and spends most of her time helping her mother with household chores, visiting her friends and doing her homework. Dewi does not know it yet but her life is about to change. She finds out she is pregnant. She never had proper access to sexual and reproductive health education and services, and now her parents and community want to marry her to the father of the child.

Continue reading →

Donner la priorité aux contextes fragiles dans le monde de l’après-pandémie

Development Matters Covid-19, Français , ,

Par Jorge Moreira da Silva, Directeur, Direction de la coopération pour le développement de l’OCDE  

Read this blog in English

Les chocs économiques et sociaux liés à la pandémie ou en rapport avec le climat n’ont épargné aucun pays du monde en 2020, mais ils font peser une grave menace et frappent de manière disproportionnée les contextes fragiles ou touchés par un conflit. Déjà parmi les moins à même de faire face aux chocs, et dotés de capacités d’adaptation insuffisantes, ceux-ci sont aujourd’hui particulièrement exposés à ces risques. Ils ont besoin d’urgence de plus de soutien de la part de la communauté internationale, tant pour se relever à court terme que pour renforcer leur résilience face à de futurs chocs systémiques.

Un an après le début de la Décennie d’action et de réalisations, les contextes fragiles ou touchés par un conflit se trouvent à la croisée des chemins. Avant même la pandémie de COVID-19, les 57 contextes fragiles – y compris les 13 contextes extrêmement fragiles – recensés dans la publication de l’OCDE États de fragilité 2020 abritaient près d’un quart de la population mondiale, mais aussi les trois quarts des personnes en situation d’extrême pauvreté dans le monde. Aucun d’entre eux n’est en passe d’atteindre les objectifs de développement durable (ODD) relatifs à l’élimination de la faim, à la bonne santé, au bien-être et à l’égalité entre les sexes. Là où la majorité des pays en développement non fragiles progressent, la plupart des contextes fragiles régressent : ceux qui accusaient déjà un retard voient aujourd’hui celui-ci s’aggraver.

Continue reading →

Strengthening climate resilience in developing countries: what are the priorities?

Development Matters Green transition ,

By Takayoshi Kato, OECD Development Co-operation Directorate and Nicolina Lamhauge, OECD Environment Directorate

Over the last 12 months, the Philippines has had to fight two rising tides threatening the population of its archipelago: the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the consequences of devastating weather events including several typhoons and tropical storms. Not only did Typhoon Goni lead to the evacuation of almost 1 million people from their homes last October, the country has also had to grapple with a string of less extreme, slow-onset changes, such as rising sea-levels, putting houses, schools, shops and infrastructure at risk. The Philippines is not an isolated case: all over the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has all but exposed the fragility of societies to systemic shocks, reminding us of the imperative of investing more resolutely in resilience building mechanisms and enablers.

The impact of climate change on developing countries is a case in point: by altering and intensifying risk patterns, it has been compounding other stressors such as poverty, inequality and discrimination, and threatening the ability of those countries to achieve their sustainable development objectives. Responding to this increasingly pressing need for climate action is a difficult task for administrations already struggling with other environmental challenges, on top of social and economic ones. International co-operation partners can provide critical support to partner countries. However, for finance and technical co-operation to be effective, and not complicate the task of the policymakers they mean to help, those partners must target and manage their support in a smart way, drawing from experience around the globe. As the OECD releases its updated guidance to making development pathways more climate resilient, three priorities emerge from our research and consultation process.

Continue reading →

The shifting global geography of innovation

Development Matters New social contract

By Riccardo Crescenzi, Simona Iammarino, Carolin Ioramashvili, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Michael Storper, London School of Economics & Political Science, Department of Geography & Environment

The geography of technological innovation around the globe has changed over the last three decades, and with it the geography of wealth creation. Innovation has become simultaneously more globally spread across different parts of the world, and more intensely localised in strongly interconnected global hotspots, generating positive and negative effects and new kinds of inequality.

Since the 1st Industrial Revolution, innovation has not only been a motor of economic growth; it has also strongly shaped (un)equal geographical patterns of development and income distribution. Each successive major industrial revolution has had its own distinctive geography. The 2nd Industrial Revolution – broadly based on electro-mechanical general-purpose technologies – witnessed the entry of North America into the high-income club of the world, while broadening the industrialised regions of Europe. The benefits spread widely through the territories of innovative countries, down their urban hierarchies, generating a tendency of inter-regional income convergence in the mid-20th century.

Continue reading →

Africa’s next transformation: connecting people and places

Development Matters Africa, Building resilience , ,

By Jose Luis Guasch, Former Head of the World Bank Global Experts Group on PPP and Logistics, Professor Emeritus University of California, San Diego

Trucks at the border crossing between Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Photo by Rainer Lesniewski, Shutterstock

Pedro, a small farmer in the Andes, spends another sleepless night worrying about how to feed his family. He wonders how to improve the productivity of his small crop of vegetables and how to reduce time cost and losses (spoilage) in the process of taking his produce to the market. George is a small and medium enterprise (SME) entrepreneur, who exports his products. He has to face poor and bumpy roads, delays and red tape in securing permits and certifications, cumbersome custom and/or cross border procedures, lack of cooling facilities, losses due to spoilage and even theft, deficient packaging and scale consolidation, low productivity etc. That is the common plight of most SME farmers and producers in emerging economies. The costs of bringing their products to the market hover around 30% of product value, when it should and can be below 10%.

Weaknesses in transportation and logistics are a recurring theme in numerous diagnostic studies analysing the obstacles to productivity, trade and economic growth in most Latin American and African countries. Particularly burdensome are deficient trade corridors and the dismal conditions of feeder roads connecting markets, borders and ports, as well as the lack of effective logistics services.  

Continue reading →