Over the past decade, Kenya's traditional model of local, community finance and management of schools has been crowded out from two directions. First, the Kenyan government has expanded its role in public education, through free provision of primary and, more recently, secondary education....

We investigate the question of whether firms in Africa's manufacturing sector are credit constrained. The fact that few firms obtain credit is not sufficient to prove constraints, since certain firms may not have a demand for credit while others may be refused credit as part of profit maximising...

For many research problems in developing countries, some information on prices faced by households is required, for example if subsistence consumption is a substantial part of consumption. These prices are not readily available from household surveys, and at times they are not easily observed,...

This volume revisits the risks posed to sustainable development in Africa by natural disasters, climate change and political violence, contributing to the evidence base and identifying key issues that would warrant further research. It offers a modest contribution to discussions on human...

We review the evidence on risk and its consequences in Africa. We argue that too much attention has been given to the risk management and coping mechanisms used by households, and not enough on its implications and the scope for interventions. Much of the empirical work on risk in developing...

Household level data for Uganda for 1999/2000 and 2002/3, before and after the abolition of user fees for public health services, are used to explore the impact of this policy on different groups' ability to access health services and morbidity outcomes. We find that the policy change improved...

We use a survey of small rural enterprises from Tanzania to identify subjective as well as objective obstacles to expansion and productivity of the country's rural non-farm sector. Our results suggest that infrastructure constraints significantly reduce participation in the sector and investment...