We have long known that a person's chance of success in life is deeply influenced by early access to education, health services, safe water, and nutritious food. This in turn improves the likelihood that a child can live up to his or her human potential and pursue a rewarding life. As Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) enters its 20th year of unprecedented high economic growth and hopes continue to rise, its citizens increasingly wonder if these more hopeful economic times will translate into a better future for themselves and their families. This book - the first of its kind in SSA - documents and...

This report begins by evaluating Africa's data landscape to monitor poverty. It maps out and assesses in detail the availability and quality of the data needed to track monetary poverty (expenditures, prices, GDP) and also reflects on the governance and political processes that underpin the current situation.

Household survey data are very useful for monitoring living conditions of citizens of any country. In developing countries, a lot of this data are collected through "traditional" face-to-face household surveys. Due to the remote and dispersed nature of many populations in developing countries, but also because of the complex nature of many survey questionnaires, collection of timely welfare data has often proved expensive and logistically challenging. Yet, there is a need for faster, cheaper to collect, lighter, more nimble data collection methods to address data gaps between big household...

L idee que l on se fait de l Afrique a radicalement change. Encore considere comme le continent des guerres, des famines et de la pauvrete chronique a la fin des annees 90, le continent africain est maintenant evoque sous l angle de - l Afrique qui monte - et du - XXIe siecle africain -. Deux decennies de croissance economique sans precedent devaient en principe ameliorer sensiblement le bien-etre des populations africaines. Il est toutefois difficile de dire si c est effectivement le cas en raison de la mediocre qualite des donnees, de la nature du processus de croissance (s agissant...

By most accounts, rural Malawi has lacked dynamism in the past decade. Growth has been mostly volatile, in large part due to unstable macroeconomic fundamentals evidenced by high inflation, fiscal deficits, and interest rates. When rapid economic growth has materialized, the gains have not always reached the poorest. Poverty remains high and the rural poor face significant challenges in consistently securing enough food. Several factors contribute to stubbornly high rural poverty. They include a low-productivity and non-diversified agriculture, macroeconomic and recurrent climatic shocks,...