Category: Infrastructure

Building resilience, Infrastructure

Quality Infrastructure: putting principles into practice – the viewpoint of a development agency

Takenori Nasu, Senior Deputy Director, Operations Management Division, Operations Strategy Department, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

Investing in infrastructure is critical for recovering from the COVID-19 crisis and achieving long-term development objectives. The crisis has triggered a reshuffling of investment priorities for governments globally and significant shifts in demand. Moreover, the pandemic adds further pressure on already-constrained fiscal space in developing countries. Ensuring quality in infrastructure development has become more fundamental than ever for the efficient and effective use of limited resources for a resilient and sustainable future.

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Development Matters
Building resilience, Covid-19, Infrastructure

Building resilience and infrastructure in a warming world

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By Jan Corfee-Morlot, New Climate Economy/ World Resources Institute (WRI), Nancy Kete, Kete Consulting and Delger Erdenesanaa, WRI

This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.

Solar panels and roadInvestment in tackling climate change is still very small compared to the expected adverse impacts on society and nature. The economic costs of climate change are estimated to range from 2-10% of global GDP loss by the end of this century. Flood-related damages alone under high emissions scenarios might account for 3% of global GDP in 2100, translating to losses in the range of USD 14-27 trillion per year. In today’s US dollars, this would be equivalent to losing the combined GDP of China and India in the best-case scenario, and US, Canada and Germany combined, in the worst case.

Currently most climate funding supports work to reduce emissions rather than for adaptation to impacts. While the world must strive for net-zero emissions and the goals of the Paris Agreement, we must at the same time plan for conditions that may be much worse. Continue reading “Building resilience and infrastructure in a warming world”

Lia Beyeler
Covid-19, Green transition, Infrastructure, Natural Resources, Policy

How COVID-19 could help eliminate fossil fuel subsidies

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By Mario Pezzini, former Director of the OECD Development Centre and special adviser to the OECD Secretary-General on development, and Håvard Halland, Senior Economist at the OECD Development Centre

This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.

Oil pumpjacks in Tatarstan, Russia
Photo: Yegor Aleyev/Tass/PA Images

As oil-exporting countries struggle to respond to the crisis, there is a way to make critical fiscal resources available.

The Covid-19 pandemic has hit oil-exporting countries at the worst possible moment. Severely strained health systems, and the need for economic stimulus, call for unprecedented growth in public spending. At the same time, oil export revenues have plummeted, following the demand collapse caused by the pandemic and a breakdown of traditional price-setting mechanisms. As a result, many oil exporters in the low- and middle-income category will struggle to muster anything near the level of expenditure required for an efficient response to the virus. Continue reading “How COVID-19 could help eliminate fossil fuel subsidies”

Lia Beyeler4 Comments
Africa, Covid-19, Human Development, Infrastructure, Social Protection

Fighting COVID-19 in Africa’s informal settlements

By Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Executive Director, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN‐Habitat)

This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.

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Kibera informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo: Boris Golovnev/Shutterstock

The COVID-19 pandemic has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the world’s richest cities but poses an even greater threat to cities in the developing world. There are now more than 150,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus across Africa, in all 54 countries, with South Africa and Egypt the worst affected.

One of the most pressing concerns for Africa is that over half the population (excluding in North Africa) live in overcrowded informal settlements. In these areas where several people have to share one badly ventilated room, diseases such as COVID-19 spread fast and it is impossible to practice physical distancing whether in homes or outside. Continue reading “Fighting COVID-19 in Africa’s informal settlements”

Lia Beyeler2 Comments
Africa, Building resilience, Infrastructure

Energising Africa’s productive transformation: how intermediary cities can be a game changer

By Bakary Traoré, Economist, OECD Development Centre, and Elisa Saint-Martin, Junior policy Analyst, OECD Development Centre 

Electricity-in-Africa-shutterstock_563620138A review of on-going industrial strategies (Africa’s Development Dynamics 2019 report) shows that most African countries have the ambition to expand processing activities in sub-sectors such as agro-industries, fertilisers, metals and construction materials. To achieve this, it is urgent to improve the quality of energy supply across the continent. Regional co-operation for energy among Africa’s cross-border intermediary cities can be a game changer.

First, let’s take a look at the main challenges

Today, industrial processing activities and transport services account for no more than 35% of total energy consumption in Africa (see Figure 1, based on the OECD/IEA 2019 database). Africa’s electrical networks are struggling to cope with current needs: on average, firms in sub-Saharan Africa face 8.5 electricity outages a month (World Bank, Enterprise surveys, 2019), and 40.5% of them consider insufficient access to energy to be a major constraint to their growth and competitiveness.
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Development Matters
Africa, Food security, Human Development, Infrastructure, Policy, Trade

Nigeria’s border closure: Why it will not pay off

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By Léopold Ghins and Philipp Heinrigs, OECD Sahel and West Africa Club Secretariat

This blog is part of a series marking the upcoming 
19th International Economic Forum on Africa

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Men offload rice at Bodija market, Ibadan, Nigeria. Flickr/IITA

It has been three months since Nigeria closed its land borders and to date there are few indications as to when they will open again. The country said it wants to reduce the smuggling of goods and stop illegal inflows of Asian rice and outflows of subsidised fuel. More fundamentally, Nigerian authorities justify the closure by the need to support the domestic agricultural sector and accelerate national productivity growth.

The closure is badly affecting livelihoods in local border economies. In Benin, communities in areas close to the Seme border near the sea, or further up north near the Owode border, largely depend on Nigerian markets for their sustenance. The sudden shutdown has caused thousands of smallholder farmers to lose their produce and default on credits. In the Dendi region (an area that spans across northern Benin, Niger and Nigeria), economic networks are strongly integrated across borders. Small traders that live on these networks have lost their principal sources of income. Continue reading “Nigeria’s border closure: Why it will not pay off”

Lia Beyeler1 Comment
Africa, Data, Employment, Food security, Gender, Women and Girls, Human Development, Infrastructure, Policy, Private Sector, Trade, Youth

The food economy can create more jobs for West African youth

By Léopold Ghins and Koffi Zougbédé, OECD Sahel and West Africa Club Secretariat 

Français suit

Youth employment and job creation loom high on development agendas in West Africa. The issue is also a priority at the continental and international levels: decent work and youth empowerment are priority areas within the African Union’s Agenda 2063, and ‘youth and jobs in the Sahel’ will figure prominently amongst talks at the G7 Summit which begins this Saturday in Biarritz.

Such policy focus is necessary in view of the demographic realities in the region. Although unemployment is low overall, informality remains prevalent, and growing numbers of young people struggle to access attractive training or sources of income. West African economies need to create more and better jobs. Yet, from a policy perspective, how to support decent and inclusive job creation is not always clear. Trade-offs in public resource allocations across sectors and information gaps abound.

In this context, what and where are the opportunities for policymakers willing to address the challenge of decent job creation?

Continue reading “The food economy can create more jobs for West African youth”
Lia Beyeler4 Comments
Africa, Français, Human Development, Infrastructure, Natural Resources, Reviving multilateralism, SDGs

Le rôle essentiel des villes dans la coopération transfrontalière, levier de l’intégration africaine

Par Yvan Pasteur, Chef de la Division Afrique de l’Ouest à la Direction du développement et de la coopération suisse

Depuis longtemps, l’Afrique de l’Ouest est considérée comme une région en voie d’intégration. Des études déjà anciennes ont désigné l’espace SKBo, réunissant les régions de Sikasso (Mali), Korhogo (Côte d’Ivoire) et Bobo Dioulasso (Burkina Faso), comme un exemple de dynamisme et de coopération transfrontalières [i]. Pour autant, dans la zone SKBo comme dans d’autres, les potentiels n’ont encore débouché concrètement que sur un petit nombre de projets transfrontaliers. Il faut donc s’interroger sur les causes de cette progression trop lente. Continue reading “Le rôle essentiel des villes dans la coopération transfrontalière, levier de l’intégration africaine”

Lia Beyeler1 Comment
Infrastructure

Can digital technologies really be used to reduce inequalities?

By Tim Unwin, Chairholder, UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, Royal Holloway, University of London1, and Co-Founder of TEQtogether2

The numerous initiatives created over the last 20 years using Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) have transformed the lives of many people living in poorer countries. However, at the same time, they have also greatly increased the economic power and wealth of the owners and shareholders of large global technology corporations. In 2017, Oxfam reported that eight men owned the same wealth as the poorest half of humanity; five of these men made most of their wealth directly from the technology sector.3 Of course, such technologies can reduce inequalities, but the hidden, ugly secret of “digital development” is that instead of improving the lives of the poorest and most marginalised, such technologies have actually dramatically increased inequality at all scales, from the global to the local.

Few people and organisations emphasise this, focusing instead on the glass being half-full rather than half-empty. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and countless others have thus recently praised the achievement that 51.2% of the world’s population were using the Internet by the end of 2018.4 However, this means that 48.8% are still not using it. If the Internet brings benefits, then just under half of the world’s people are being structurally disadvantaged. Yet, this need not be. If we have the will to do so, we can indeed work together with people with disabilities, children at risk of living and working on the streets, refugees, women and girls in patriarchal societies, ethnic minorities, and those living in geographically isolated areas to help empower them through the design and use of relevant technologies.

Continue reading “Can digital technologies really be used to reduce inequalities?”
Development Matters3 Comments
Human Development, Infrastructure

Digital economies at global ‘’margins’’

By Mark Graham, Professor of Internet Geography, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford; Turing Fellow, The Alan Turing Institute; and Research Affiliate, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford

digital-economies.jpgBillions of people at the world’s economic ‘’margins’’ are experiencing a moment of changing connectivity. In Manila, Manchester, Mogadishu, the banlieues of Marseille and everywhere in between, the world is becoming digital, digitised and digitally mediated at an astonishing pace. Most of the world’s wealthy have long been digitally connected, but the world’s poor and economically marginal have not been enrolled in digital networks until relatively recently. In only five years (2012–2017), over one billion people became new Internet users (ITU 2016). In 2017, Internet users became a majority of the world’s population. The networking of humanity is thus no longer confined to a few economically prosperous parts of the world. For the first time in history, we are creating a truly global and accessible communication network.

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Development Matters