The East African Community (EAC) economic integration has gained momentum recently, with the EAC countries aiming to adopt a single currency in 2015. This paper evaluates empirically the readiness of the EAC countries for monetary union. First, structural similarity of the EAC countries is...

The East African Community (EAC) economic integration has gained momentum recently, with the EAC countries aiming to adopt a single currency in 2015. This paper evaluates empirically the readiness of the EAC countries for monetary union. First, structural similarity of the EAC countries is...

Food prices rose rapidly in 2007 and in early2008, but started falling during the second halfof 2008. Despite this fall, many African countriesare yet to recover from the severe economicand social strain caused by the suddenescalation of prices. This situation, however,has triggered renewed...

Drawing on the 2007 and 2010 Swaziland Labor Force Surveys, this paper provides first systematic evidence on recent youth employment challenges in Swaziland, a small, land-locked, middle-income country with one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Africa. The paper first documents the...

This paper examines macroeconomic trends, drivers and impact of remittances in Africa. First, it documents the increasing share of remittances relative to other foreign capital flows to Africa, distribution of remittance inflows across countries, and some key properties. This is followed by some...

The global financial crisis hasreiterated the need for Africa tobuild resilience to global outputshocks. In this paper we examineempirically the role of intra-regionaland intra-African trade linkages inbeing an absorber of the globaloutput shocks in two Africanregional economic communities....

The shortages of entrepreneurial skillshave lowered search effectiveness of potential young entrepreneurs and the rate of youth start-ups. Our paper contributes to closing a gap in the entrepreneurship and development literature with a model of costly firm creation and skill differences between...

Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia face challenges competing on the global markets, as shown by their relatively low and stagnant export shares. The limited export competitiveness has hampered external demand, growth and employment. Applying, for the first time to North Africa, the stock-flow approach...

The objective of this paper is to discussmacroeconomic policies that would helpAfrican countries, especially the lowincome countries (LICs), reach strong,sustained and shared growth in the postcrisisworld. The paper first reviews, witha special focus on LICs, macroeconomicpolicies in Africa...

Smallholder agriculture continues to play akey role in African agriculture. This paperinvestigates trends, challenges andopportunities of this sub-sector in EastAfrica through case studies of Kenya,Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania. In theseagriculture-based economies, smallholderfarming accounts...