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Aid, Employment and Poverty Reduction in Africa
Author(s) -
Page John,
Shimeles Abebe
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
african development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.654
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-8268
pISSN - 1017-6772
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8268.12136
Subject(s) - poverty , poverty reduction , economics , development economics , productivity , job creation , labour economics , economic growth
Growth in Africa is weakly linked to poverty reduction. The reason is that Africa has failed to create enough good jobs. Structural transformation—the relative growth of employment in high productivity sectors—has not featured in Africa's post‐1995 growth story. As a result, the region's fastest growing economies have the least responsiveness of employment and poverty to growth. Development aid is partly responsible. Across Africa more aid went to countries with a low employment intensity of growth. The study proposes a new approach to aid and poverty in Africa, one that focuses on supporting structural change for job creation.