Conference Program, April 18-20, 2013

Conference Program, cheap April 18-20, for sale 2013
African Economic Development:
Measuring Success and Failure

The World Bank Chief Economist for Africa, Shanta Devarajan, recently declared that the state of development data in Africa amounts to nothing less than a statistical tragedy. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that, due to data unreliability, we currently know little about the growth and income of African economies. Yet institutions and scholars routinely make statements regarding the pace and direction of development in Africa.

Recently, there has been an increased focus on the weakness of statistical systems in sub-Saharan Africa. The remarkable upward revision causing a doubling in GDP in Ghana has just been confirmed, and reports suggest that a similar upward revision of GDP is pending in Nigeria. These very visible events have raised the attention given to African statistics, especially for the measurement of growth, poverty and also for development in African economies in a broader sense.

The conference seeks to establish the extent of the data problems and the implications for both academic interpretations and policy advice. As well as fully setting out the problems, the main task is then to suggest improvements or alternatives that can advance our understanding of African economic development and provide active guidance for policy makers. Specifically this conference invites producers of data (the local statistical offices in African countries); disseminators of data (representatives from World Bank and the IMF); and data users such as development scholars and International development organizations. The conference also unique in that brings together scholars from different disciplines, including history, economics, economic historians, political scientists, anthropology and sociology. Bringing these types of data users together will generate a productive and innovative basis for remedying the problems of development statistics.

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The conference runs over three days with three specific themes:

April 18, Day 1: Statistical Tragedy in Africa? Evaluating the Data Base for African Economic Development
April 19, Day 2: Measurement, Planning and the State in Sub-Saharan Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
April 20, Day 3: New African Economic History: Sources and Methods in Analyzing Long Term African Economic Development

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Special Events:

Friday April 19, 6 pm: Book launch. Morten Jerven, Poor Numbers. How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do about It.

Saturday April 20, 10 am: Keynote. Anthony Hopkins, New African Economic History.

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Thursday 18 April

The Data Base for African Economic Development 20 Years on: What Have We Learned?

8:30-9:00am – Registration and Coffee

9:00-10:30am – Panel 1: Africa’s Statistical Tragedy: Poverty, Income and Growth

• Morten Jerven (SFU) – Introductory Remarks
• Rodrigo Garcia Verdu (IMF) – The Evolution of Poverty and Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa over the Period 1980-2008: What Do We (and Can We) Know Given the Data Available?
• Deborah Johnston (SOAS) and Alexandre Abreu (University Technique of Lisbon) – Asset Indicies as a Proxy for Poverty Measurement in African Countries: a Reassessment

10:30-11:00am – Coffee Break

11:00am-12:30pm – Panel 2:  Africa’s Statistical Tragedy: Poverty, Income and Growth

Chair: Deborah Johnston (SOAS)

• Justin Sandefur and Amanda Glassman (Center of Global Development) – The Mystery of African Development: Exploring Systematic Discrepancies between Survey and Administrative Data
• Sara Randall (UC London) and Ernestina Coast (LSE) – Poverty in African Households: the Limits of Survey Representations
• Andrew Dabalen (World Bank) – Is Poverty Reduction in Africa Underestimated Because of Poor Data?

12:30pm -1:30pm – Lunch

1:30-3:30pm – Panel 3: Surveying Labour and Agriculture

Chair: Sara Randall (UC London)

• Louise Fox (World Bank) and Obert Pimhidzai – Collecting, Using, and Interpreting Employment Statistics in Sub-Saharan Africa – The Case of Uganda
• Matteo Rizzo (SOAS) and Marc Wuyts – The Invisibility of Wage-Employment in Statistics on the Informal Economy in Africa: Causes and Consequences
• Gero Carletto (World Bank) and Dean Jolliffe (World Bank) and Raka Banerjee – Improving Household Survey Data on Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Chris Cramer, Deborah Johnston, Carlos Oya, John Sender and Bernd Mueller (SOAS) – How to do (and how not to do) Fieldwork on Fair Trade and Rural Poverty

3:30-4:00pm – Coffee Break

4:00-6:00pm Panel 4: Monitoring Human Capital Development

Chair: Alex Moradi (Sussex)

• Roy Carr-Hill (Institute of Education, London) – Measuring Development Progress in Africa: the Denominator Problem
• Robert McCaa (University of Minnesota) – Human Development Index-like Small Area Estimates for Africa Computed from IPUMS-International integrated Census Microdata (McCaa_Tables / Powerpoint Slides)
• Abebe Shimeles (African Development Bank) – The Making of the Middle Class in Africa: Evidence Based on Demographic and Health Surveys
• Andrew Dabalen (World Bank) – Collecting High Frequency Panel Data in Africa Using Mobile Phone Interviews

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Friday 19 April

Measurement, Planning and the State in Sub-Saharan Africa: Historical Perspectives

8:30-9:00am – Coffee

9:00-10:30am Panel 5: Economic Planning in Newly Independent States

Chair: Felicitas Becker (Cambridge)

• Gerardo Serra (LSE) – Towards a Political Economy of Statistics: A Study of Household Budget Surveys in the Gold Coast, 1945-1957
• Joseph Morgan Hodge (West Virginia University) – Development and Twentieth-Century Colonialism in Africa: A Short History
• Alden Young (Princeton) – The Military and National Income Accounting in Sudan: The Search for Legitimacy, 1959-1964

10:30-11:00am – Coffee Break

11:00am-12:30pm – Panel 6: The Use of Numbers in Politics

Chair: Gerardo Serra (LSE)

• Felicitas Becker (Cambridge) – The Bureaucratic Performance of Development in Colonial and Post-Colonial Tanzania
• Boris Samuel (Sciences Po) – Economic Calculations, Instability and (In)formalization of the State in Mauritania, 2003-2011
• Dwayne Woods (Purdue) –The Use, Abuse and Omertà on the Noise in the Data: African Democratization, Development and Growth

12:30-1:30pm – Lunch

1:30-3:00pm – Panel 7:  Reports from the Statistical Offices

Chair: Elizabeth Cooper (SFU)

• Yemi Kale (National Bureau of Statistics) – WHERE ARE THE NUMBERS? National Bureau of Statistics and the Reset of the Nigerian National Statistical System
• Magnus Ebo Duncan (Ghana Statistical Services) – National Income Accounting Revision in Liberia? The Weakness of the Statistical Infrastructure Exposed
• Moffat Nyoni (Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency)-Adjustments for GDP Exhaustiveness in Zimbabwe

3:00-3:30pm – Coffee Break

3:30-5:00pm – Panel 8:  Between Statistical Tragedy and Renaissance

Chair: Ewout Frankema

• Johannes Jütting (Paris21 and OECD) – MDGs, Post 2015 Development Framework and Statistics: What to do?
• Dimitri Sanga (UNECA) – The Challenges of the Narrative of African Countries’ Development: Data Demand and Supply Mismatches
• Ben Kiregyera (African Centre for Statistics) – The Dawning of a Statistical Renaissance in Africa

6:00pm – Book Launch

Morten Jerven – Poor Numbers How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do about It

7:00pm – Drink Reception

8:00pm – Dinner

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Saturday 20 April

New African Economic History: Sources and Methods in Analyzing Long Term African Economic Development

9.30-10:00am– Coffee

10:00-11:00am – Keynote:   Tony Hopkins – The New Economic History of Africa

11:00am-12:00pm – Panel 9:  Sources and Methods

• Gareth Austin (Graduate Institute) – Beyond Old and New in the Study of African Economic History: A Critical Survey of Sources and Methods
• Patrick Manning (Pittsburgh) – African Population, 1650 – 1950: New Estimates by Region (Manning Tables)

12:00-1:00pm – Lunch

1:00-3:00pm – Panel 10:  Colonial States, Investment and Growth 

Chair: Gareth Austin (Graduate Institute)

• Ewout Frankema (Utrecht) and Marlous van Waijenburg (Northwestern) – Endogenous Colonial Institutions: Lessons from Fiscal Capacity Building in British and French Africa, 1880-1940
• Erik Green (Lund) – Growth and inequality in a bimodal colony – a dialectic interpretation of Southern Rhodesia
• Ellen Hillbom (Lund) and Jutta Bolt (Groningen) – Social Structures, Standards of Living, and Income Distribution in Colonial Bechuanaland Protectorate
• Alex Moradi (Sussex) – Colonial Investments and African Development: Further Evidence from Railroads in Kenya

3:00-3:30pm – Coffee Break

3:30pm-5:30pm – Panel 10:  Commerce and Merchants

Chair: Tony Hopkins

• Joseph Inikori (Rochester) – The development of Commercial Agriculture in Pre Colonial West Africa
• Kofi Asante (Northwestern) – Collusion, Collaboration/Cooperation and Conflict: How Indigenous Gold Coast Merchants Shaped State Formation in the Gold Coast, 1850-1950
• Chibuike Uche (Enugu) – The Nationalization of Lonrho’s Business Interests in Tanzania

6:00pm – Conference Closing.

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List of Participants

Shimeles Abebe – African Development Bank
Alexandre Abreu – University Technique of Lisbon
Oladejo Ajayi – formerly Nigeria National Bureau of Statistics
Kofi Asante – Northwestern University
Gareth Austin – The Graduate Institute Geneva
Felicitas Becker – Cambridge University
Jutta Bolt – University of Groningen
Gero Carletto – World Bank
Roy Carr Hill – Institute of Education, London
Elizabeth Cooper – Simon Fraser University
Oliver Chinganya – African Development Bank
Ernestina Coast – London School of Economics
Andrew Dabalen – World Bank
Jeff Davis – Bill Gates Foundation
Alec Dawson – Simon Fraser University
Magnus Ebo Duncan – Ghana Statistical Services
Louise Fox – World Bank
Ewout Frankema – University of Utrecht and Wageningen University
Erik Green – Lund University
John Harriss –  Simon Fraser University
Ellen Hillbom – Lund University
Barbro Hexeberg – World Bank
Joseph Hodge – West Virginia University
Anthony Hopkins – The University of Texas at Austin
Cynthia Howson – University of Washington
Joseph Inikori – Rochester University
Andrew Jack – Financial Times
David Jacks – Simon Fraser University
Deborah Johnson – School of Oriental and African Studies
Dean Jolliffe – World Bank
Johannes Jutting – OECD
Oyeyemi Kale – National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria
Ben Kiregyera – DevInfCo, formerly Uganda Bureau of Statistics
Mattias Lindgren – Gapminder
Patrick Manning – University of Pittsburg
Robert McCaa – University of Minnesota
Alex Moradi – University of Sussex
Themba Munalula – Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA)
Yusuf Murangwa – National Institute of Statistics Rwanda
Alice Nabalamba – African Development Bank
Moffat Nyoni – Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency
Innocent Oduh – National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria
Kayode Olaniyan – National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria
Clint Pecencka – Bill Gates Foundation
Sara Randall – University College London
Matteo Rizzo – School of Oriental and African Studies
Boris Samuel – Sciences Po and CERI
Justin Sandefur – Center for Global Development
Dimitri Sanga – United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
Gerardo Serra – London School of Economics
Chibuike Uche – University of Nigeria Enugu Campus
Marlous van Waijenburg – Northwestern University
Dwayne Woods – Purdue University
Alden Young – Princeton University