 Better understanding of the geography of development can lead to more effective development aid. This Report advocates different strategies for Africa’s landlocked countries and its resource poor coastal economies. The former have natural disadvantages associated with geography and a large distance to market that reduces their potential growth by as much as half a percentage point per year. But what is unusual in Africa is that resource-poor coastal countries have underperformed. These are the types of countries that act as engines of growth in other world regions. Africa’s growth poles are still weak.
This Report argues, to exaggerate somewhat, that development strategies for leading areas should invest in places, and strategies for lagging areas should invest in people. Seen through the lens of economic geography, the thrust of development assistance to Africa that focused on education, health, and other social infrastructure in the late 1990s seems correct for the lagging, landlocked countries. But this assistance appears to focus on the wrong priorities for coastal countries, which need physical infrastructure and better integration with global markets. A better contract between donors and countries would be to differentiate approaches across countries depending on their potential market access. This Report proposes a tailored approach, which would lay out the rights and responsibilities of countries according to their potential regional role. For each of Sub- Saharan Africa’s regions, the contract would in clued specific obligations and actions that encourage regional development. The governments of East, West, and Central Africa would commit to the following: - Establishing “Regional Economic Areas” that would tie the economic interests of leading and lagging countries in Africa’s regional neighborhoods tightly together and provide a framework for the provision of regional public goods.
- Pursuing freer movements of labor, capital, goods, and services within these areas.
- Maintaining and protecting access routes between landlocked countries and outlets for trade.
The strategy would combine institutional cooperation, investment in regional infrastructure, and coordinated interventions that may require giving up some hard-won and jealously guarded attributes of national sovereignty. In exchange for these actions, bilateral and multilateral development partners would commit to the following: - A large increase in international financial assistance for improved social services and other life-sustaining infrastructure aimed at raising living standards and creating portable human capital in lagging countries.
- Increased financial support for growth sustaining infrastructure—including ports, transport links, and information and communication technology—in the coastal countries, as well as corridor infrastructure to link coastal and interior markets.
- Preferential access for Sub-Saharan Africa’s exports, with liberalized rules of origin that encourage regional supply chains.
Things are already headed in this direction. In 2007 the Government of the United Kingdom, through its Department for International Development, allocated $1.4 billion over the coming decade to efforts by the governments of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda and to revitalize the East African Economic Community. The European Commission is also adopting a regional approach with its economic partnership agreements. But all donors could be bolder in their approaches. The experience of Europe after World War II illustrates how national determination to prioritize reconstruction coupled with international assistance can pay off. Regional integration in Europe did not go smoothly initially. But encouraged by the tough terms of cooperation in the Marshall Plan, a process of integration that would have been impossible a generation earlier, created the largest common market for capital, labor, and ideas today. Source: WDR 2009 team. |
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