That was the name of the conference in Helsinki, organized by UNU-WIDER. All in all an underwhelming experience. I understand that we are a bit excited about growth in Africa, but maybe the title of the conference should have been: Inclusive growth in Africa?...
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Category: Economic Growth
Ken Opalo on Poor Numbers in Kenya
Governing a country is hard. Developing a poor country is even harder. Trying to do both with little reliable information on the state of a country — like total agricultural output, unemployment rate, births and deaths, and the like — is like flying without...
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Economic Growth and Measurement Reconsidered in Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, 1965-1995
That's the title of my next book. To be published by Oxford University Press. It is expected to be available in March 2014.
Reading Economics
My latest paper in the Canadian Journal of Development studies is a suggestion for how we can teach economics to interdisciplinary students in development studies. This is the abstract: What is the role of the economics discipline in teaching and studying international development today?...
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IMF Regional Outlook Report for Sub-Saharan Africa May 2013
The IMF REO for Sub-Saharan Africa was released in May, no rx and it is good to see that the authors of the report considers the importance of base years in Box 1.1 on page 4: One factor raising concerns about the quality of...
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What caused Africa’s recent growth?
In Foreign Affairs I explain that the recent growth is partly good news and partly fiction. The GDPs of many African countries appear to be soaring, which is partly a statistical fluke due to recent corrections of decades of bad data. African countries now...
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Statistics in Africa: Making Africa count
The Economist writes about statistics in Africa based on an interview with Morten Jerven. Read the story here.
Poor Numbers in the ‘Africa Rising’ debate in Foreign Policy
FOREIGN POLICY article - January 28, 2013. "We Have No Idea if Africa Is Rising" Recent FP contributors have said that Africa is and is not rising. They're both wrong because they don't have the numbers to back it up. Read the Article