Africa Rising? Short-Term Growth vs. Deep Institutional Concerns

Berhanu Nega and Geoffrey Schneider

Forum for Social Economics, 2016, vol. 45, issue 4, 283-308

Abstract: Research on development has moved away from short-term performance to long-term determinants of success. This paper identifies historical factors that shaped the development of key institutions, the degree to which these institutions affected past economic outcomes and, more importantly, which ones are influencing contemporary performance. We first look at the trend in long-term economic performance for the continent compared with other regions of the world. The paper then evaluates the various explanations provided by the standard development model to explain this performance for Africa. The paper shows that the most important long-term determinant of economic and social performance in the continent has been the nature of the distribution of power, which shaped the distribution of economic resources. Furthermore, the paper argues that the distribution of power and the institutions that ensure this distribution were shaped by a number of historical events whose impact still endures.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/07360932.2016.1200108 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:fosoec:v:45:y:2016:i:4:p:283-308

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RFSE20

DOI: 10.1080/07360932.2016.1200108

Access Statistics for this article

Forum for Social Economics is currently edited by William Milberg, Dr Wolfram Elsner, Philip O'Hara, Cecilia Winters and Paolo Ramazzotti

More articles in Forum for Social Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().