Very happy to the see Measuring African Development: Past and Present in print. You can read an open access of the introduction to the book here. The volume takes you through the very first household budget surveys and national account estimates during colonial rule...
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Category: Ghana
Recalculating Kenya’s GDP
Nic Cheeseman writes about the new GDP numbers in Kenya. They are not ready yet, viagra and the jump in GDP will not be as big as they were in Nigeria or Ghana. As in Nigeria and Ghana the new numbers will not make...
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Measuring African Development: Past and Present – Special Issue
In 2013 the chief economist for the World Bank's Africa region, Shanta Devarajan, delivered a devastating assessment of the capacity of African states to measure development and declared “Africa's Statistical Tragedy”. Is there a “statistical tragedy” unfolding in Africa now?If so then examining the...
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A history of economic growth in Africa: why measurement matters
The GDP re-basing in Nigeria again brought measurement to the center of debates on African economic development, just like it happened when Ghana re-based their GDP in 2010. There has been more commentary in mainstream media this time around - and also a fair...
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Nigeria Rebases GDP
The announcement is expected to be made on Sunday. It has been expected any day now for almost three years, pilule so it is about time. As I documented in Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do...
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GDP in Ghana – Two lines
As I have discussed elsewhere (here, here and here), in 2010, Ghana changed its base year for GDP calculation from 1993 to 2006, and the cumulative effect of change in methods, base year and adding new data on economic activities meant that total GDP...
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When A Poor Country Gets A Lot Richer
Planet Money, on National Public Radio spoke to me about Ghana, GDP revisions and statistics in Africa and summarized as: People talk about GDP as if it means something solid, as if it's a mathematically derived and agreed upon fact. But in conversations we've...
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