Shocks, Resilience and Structural Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Adesoji Adelaja, Justin George, Louise Fox, Keith Fuglie and Thomas Jayne
Additional contact information
Justin George: Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, 204 Morrill Hall of Agriculture, 446 West Circle Drive, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
Keith Fuglie: Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, 204 Morrill Hall of Agriculture, 446 West Circle Drive, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 24, 1-22

Abstract: Evidence of how resilience factors mitigate the adverse effects of shocks on individuals, households and communities is clearly established. However, such evidence at the macro level is limited, especially on the pace of structural transformation. This paper explores whether the growing incidence of terrorism, armed conflicts and natural disasters in SSA impeded the pace of structural transformation. We conceptualize the notion of macro-resilience and test whether resilience factors mitigate the adverse effects of shocks on two measures of structural transformation: agriculture’s share of GDP and of national employment. We find that structural transformation is impeded by armed conflict and terrorism-related shocks but not natural disasters and that resilience factors enhance the pace of agricultural transformation. This implies that, while agriculture is often destroyed in conflict-affected areas, the broader impacts are even more negative for other sectors of the economy. However, surprisingly, we find negative or insignificant interaction terms between the shock and resilience variables, implying no mitigative role of resilience capacities. This may suggest, in the case of conflicts and terrorism, the presence of major, debilitating effects which limit the mitigative capacity of resilience factors. We further explore the implications for future research and possible strategies to address the growing threats from shocks.

Keywords: structural transformation; resilience; conflict; natural disasters; shocks; terrorism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/24/13620/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/24/13620/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:24:p:13620-:d:698721

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().