Most of Africa's poor are deeply religious. Not only are faith communities among the poor, in many cases they are the poor. Like other faith communities, the Christian Church in Africa has grown impressively. Its development role must be taken seriously, not just because it is trusted and...

Intro -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acronyms and Abbreviations -- Part 1 -- Introduction 1 -- Common Ground and Common Concerns: Communiqué of the CAPA- World Bank Conference 2 -- Part 2 -- Alleviating Poverty in Africa 3 -- Africa's Enigma 4 -- Voices of the Poor 5 -- Part 3 -- Serving the Poor...

When European powers partitioned Africa, individuals of otherwise homogeneous communities were divided and found themselves randomly assigned to one coloniser. This provides for a natural experiment: applying a border discontinuity analysis to Ghana and Togo, we test what impact...

Africa is well endowed with potential for hydro and solar power, but its other endowments - shortages of capital, skills, and governance capacity - make most of the green options relatively expensive, while its abundance of hydro-carbons makes fossil fuels relatively cheap.  Current power...

Expansion in mobile phone coverage has improved access to information throughout the developing world, particularly within sub-Saharan Africa.  The existing evidence suggests that information technology has improved market efficiency and reduced consumer prices for certain commodities.  There...

Contemporary policy debates on the macroeconomics of aid often concentrate on short-run Dutch disease effects, ignoring the possible supply model of aid and public expenditure in which public infrastructure capital generates an inter-temporal productivity spill over for both tradable and...

In many developing countries, the beneficiaries of transfer programmes are determined by community-based processes, based on some general targeting rules related to needs.  This opens the door for local social and political processes to impact on who gets access.  Despite increasingly large...

Following the 2007 disputed Kenyan Presidential election unprecedented levels of violence erupted across the country adding to the history of troubled elections in Africa.  This paper offers quantitative and qualitative evidence on the incidence, impacts and issues that triggered electoral...