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Standard welfare comparisons between female-headed households (FHHs) and male-headed households (MHHs) have largely ignored two confounding factors: marital status (affecting access to assets and markets) and heterogeneity in household demographics (with bearing on economies of scale in consumption). Both influence welfare and are correlated with sex of headship. As judged by the usual per capita welfare measures, FHHs have lower poverty rates than MHHs in Africa. However, even a modest adjustment for economies of scale in consumption changes the poverty comparisons, with FHHs faring significantly worse overall in East, Central, and Southern Africa. Marital status also matters: the households of female heads are poorer than MHHs except when the female head is married. Taking the head's marital status and the household's demographics into account is critical to the association between female headship and welfare outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cost to developing countries, for current and future generations, of not eradicating hunger and poverty – in terms of recurrent conflicts and emergencies, widening inequalities, depleted resources, ill health, and premature death – is enormous. Although strategies are underway to address certain problems in Africa and the Middle East, much remains to be done. Breaking the poverty cycle in these regions demands both local and international attention. Nutrition transition is a key factor, since many countries in the region also suffer the consequences of the excessive and unbalanced diets that are typical of developed countries. This paper reviews the experiences with facing malnutrition in Sub-Saharan and North Africa and the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary assistance is a common request from social ties and can be both an economic lifeline and a financial burden. This study examines the relational work at the heart of such exchanges, examining when and how attempts at mobilizing informal financial assistance are resisted. Using qualitative data from West African factory workers, we demonstrate that individuals who wish to resist the provision of assistance without causing relational damage employ rhetorical strategies designed to justify or obfuscate their refusal, relying heavily on socially legitimate reason-giving. The findings reveal that subjective calculations of resource availability are central to the mobilization of assistance, resistant givers differentiate between justification and obfuscation of refusals, and earmarks can play a role in protecting resources from social demands. More broadly, these findings suggest ways that a differential ability to resist social capital mobilization may generate inequalities within social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, obstetric haemorrhage (OH) remains the leading cause of maternal mortality. Much of the associated mortality is ascribed to challenges surrounding deployment of innovations rather than lack of availability. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where the burden is highest, there is a growing interest in implementation research as a means to bridge the 'know-do' gap between proven interventions and their reliable implementation at scale. In this systematic review, we identified and synthesized qualitative and quantitative data across the implementation outcomes of OH prevention innovations in LMICs using a taxonomy developed by Proctor et al. We also identified service outcomes for the included innovations, as well as implementation strategies and implementation facilitators and barriers. Eligible studies were empirical, focused on the implementation of OH prevention programmes or policies and occurred in an LMIC. Eight databases were searched. Two authors independently assessed studies for selection and extracted data; the first author resolved discrepancies. Narrative synthesis was used to analyse and interpret the findings. Studies were predominantly focused in Africa and on primary prevention. Interventions included prophylactic use of uterotonics (n = 7), clinical provider skills training (n = 4) and provision of clinical guidelines (n = 1); some (n = 3) were also part of a multi-component quality improvement bundle. Various barriers were reported, including challenges among intervention beneficiaries, providers and within the health system; however, studies reported the development and testing of practical implementation solutions. These included training and monitoring of implementers, community and stakeholder engagement and guidance by external mentors. Some studies linked successful delivery to implementation outcomes, most commonly adoption and acceptability, but also feasibility, penetration and sustainability. Findings suggest that innovations to prevent OH can be acceptable, appropriate and feasible in LMIC settings; however, more research is needed to better evaluate these and other under-reported implementation outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across Africa, weak states, poverty, high fertility, and early marriage pose barriers to girls' schooling. Francophone West and Central Africa registers the continent's lowest female literacy rates, in part because it inherited a weak educational infrastructure at independence, and is home to Muslim communities that initially rejected schools of Christian origin. Policies insisting on exclusively French-medium instruction have also been an obstacle to girls' schooling. Such schooling was perceived as preparation for state employment not expected of females. Moreover, French-medium schools were perceived as a cultural threat even as girls were central to communities' efforts to resist assimilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Bereft, Selfish, and Hungry” is a history of “the poor” as a concept in East Africa in the Common Era. It shows how people speaking Greater Luhyia languages reconceptualized poverty as they settled new lands, interacted with other communities, and dealt with social and political change. Their notions of the poor ranged from connecting them with bereavement to associating them with selfishness; from an early emphasis on want to later ideas of deceit. Paying attention to these changes in different, yet related, historical speaker communities allows us to see the dynamism in Greater Luhyian economic thought. This article thus makes the case for writing longue durée histories of vernacular ways of knowing in oral societies. Doing so requires drawing on methods from other disciplines. In this case, comparative historical linguistics allows for the reconstruction of words and their meanings to different proto-languages, whether proto-Greater Luhyia or its descendant languages. Those words and meanings can then be contextualized with evidence from archaeology, climate science, oral traditions, and ethnographic descriptions. Through this approach, we learn a great deal about how people in eastern Uganda and western Kenya historically conceived of the poor and how those ideas changed over time, well before the advent of colonialism, Christianity, and capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know less about growth and poverty based on numbers in African economies than we would like to think. Numbers are soft, and data availability is sparse, sporadic, and uneven. For researchers and data users, whether engaged in inferential or descriptive statistics, the message is that studying Africa by numbers can be misleading. This research note surveys the knowledge gap and provides guidance on how to and how not to study Africa by numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transforming repressive institutions into respected instruments of justice is necessary for the social reconstruction of fragile and postconflict states. Yet, little attention has been given to the role of health systems in facilitating such change. We situate South Africa’s right to access health care as part of a broader sociopolitical endeavour to ‘bring justice’ in the aftermath of apartheid and argue that street-level bureaucrats tasked with delivering health services are a gauge of both individual and institutional transformation. Using cases from two urban areas, we consider responses to inaccessible antiretroviral therapy, tuberculosis treatment and maternal deliveries and ask whether these ameliorate or compound access barriers. We also explore some conditions for bringing justice to street-level interactions. Our cases suggest that, if left unchallenged, negative street-level bureaucracy may compound inaccessible care for patients and perpetuate a wider culture of disempowerment, deprivation and poverty – ongoing structural violence – for citizens, while positive provider practices may be ameliorative. Strengthening street-level accountability and engendering respectful, empathetic provider practices is consequently vital to improving access to services and contributing more generally to the restoration of justice and health in society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the ebb and flow of theoretical ideas in African Studies, specifically the interface between African Studies and Development Studies. It explores the epistemological nature of interdisciplinarity in African Studies, interrogating when and how theoretical insight may contribute to an understanding of material reality and welfare improvement in some circumstances, and miss the mark by a wide margin in other cases. The purpose of this exercise is to stimulate reflection on the contribution of African Studies to continental and global intellectual and material change, juxtaposing African Studies theory and its role as an applied field of study. This necessitates consideration of Africa's position in the interplay of world politics and the power of agenda-setting international institutions, notably the World Bank. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It has been argued that the fundamental cause of Africa’s current relative poverty is a lack of pro-growth institutions deriving either from the colonial system, the period of slavery, or from particular geographic or population characteristics. This article takes a fresh look at estimates of African country incomes. It subjects the available datasets to tests of accuracy, reliability, and volatility, and finds that there is very little to explain in terms of diversity of income between countries. With the exception of some resource-rich enclaves, a few island states, and South Africa, the income of one African economy is not meaningfully different from another. It is found that the majority of African countries should for all practical purposes be considered to have the same income level. The article therefore concludes that it is futile to use GDP estimates to prove a link between income today and existence of pro-growth institutions in the past, and recommends a searching reconsideration of the almost exclusive use of GDP as a measure of relative development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that a discourse which constructs the Internet as an inclusive development tool that can be deployed in strategies for modernizing Africa has become hegemonic among development donors and telecommunications organizations. Based on research carried out in and around three Internet cafes in Dar es Salaam, and one Multipurpose Community Telecentre (MCT) in Sengerema, this article takes issue with this discourse and suggests that the geographies of inclusion and exclusion created by the Internet are more complex. For Tanzania's information and communication technologies (ICT) elites, the Internet will shape the population into knowledge- and market-seeking, productive citizens, stimulating national growth. For Internet cafe users and non-users, the Internet has become a marker of modernity, a way for people and places to indicate their relative level of development, and Internet use is currently dominated by leisure, communication and information relating to global popular culture. However, the article demonstrates that development interventions which turn the symptoms of poverty into technical problems to be solved with technological responses are inherently flawed, since the failure to deal with the causes of poverty means that the majority of Tanzanians continue to be excluded from the ‘information society’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countries that are heavily dependent on natural resource exports have performed poorly on various measures of economic, social, and political development — a phenomenon usually described as ‘the resource curse’. In spite of this, many Western policymakers believe that natural resources will ultimately provide Africa's road to development. The World Bank argues that the resource curse is not inevitable and that good governance and sound economic policies are intervening variables that can mitigate its ill effects. This article critically evaluates the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project in order to assess whether or not policy interventions can ameliorate the resource curse. The largest single private sector investment in sub-Saharan Africa, the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project has also featured unprecedented World Bank policy interventions designed to address the complex environmental, social, and budgetary implications of large-scale oil production. The pipeline project is the World Bank's most significant attempt yet to modify the intervening variable of government policy and transform the equation from one of resource extraction + bad governance ↵ poverty exacerbation to one of resource extraction + good governance ↵ poverty reduction. This article finds that these policy interventions are not working well and that the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project is unlikely to lead to poverty alleviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Africa enters its third decade of structural adjustment pressures, the promised advantages of economic restructuring—as hailed by the various lending bodies— have not been forthcoming. The indelible picture emanating from the continent is one of a people relegated to a position of extreme poverty as state managers and the international community either fail to, or seem unable to, pursue policies that will secure the basic needs of its citizens. To compound matters, HIV and AIDS are threatening to erode the continent’s already fragile development capacity. Predicated on the continent’s limited economic capabilities, this article charts the relationship between poverty, debt relief and the politics of effective response to HIV/AIDS in Africa. The article begins with an assessment of the societal causes and consequences of the epidemic, moving on to contextualize the case for debts cancellation. It concludes by examining the crucial relationship between debt relief and the successful implementation of effective strategies against the pandemic in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines contemporary policies on foreign aid and their likely impact on African poverty. Challenges to conventional donor views include the fact that amounts of aid provided to Africa is not based on poverty needs and that gap between needs and aids provided is widening; Weakening of donor commitments to poverty reduction in Africa; Proposals for addressing the decline in foreign aid.