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Fragility and development in Africa: An introduction
Author(s) -
Hoeffler Anke
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
review of development economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.531
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1467-9361
pISSN - 1363-6669
DOI - 10.1111/rode.12616
Subject(s) - fragility , poverty , development economics , economics , terrorism , vulnerability (computing) , political science , economic growth , law , chemistry , computer security , computer science
This special issue focuses on fragility and development in Africa. All of the contributions are part of a collaborative project initiated by the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC). Fragility is widely recognized as the main development challenge and all major international development agencies (e.g. the World Bank, OECD, the African Development Bank and UN Organisations) have published a number of reports on the subject.1 Fragility has not only an impact on the citizens of fragile states but also generates considerable regional and global negative spillovers. Fragility is associated with some of the world's biggest problems: poverty, hunger, malnutrition, disease, displacement, terrorism and crime. This special issue highlights different aspects of fragility and the complex interrelationship with economic, political and social processes and outcomes. McKay and Thorbecke (2019) investigate how fragility affects individual well‐being while Chuku and Onye (2019) examine the macroeconomic consequences of fragility. The consequences of fragility for inclusive growth are analysed by Fowowe and Folarin (2019). Fragile states generate regional spillovers, for example on trade (see Chacha and Edwards 2019) and exacerbate the cost of conflict (see Dunne and Tian 2019). Further aspects of conflict, namely post‐conflict stabilization (Hoeffler 2019) and reduced capital accumulation (Nkurunziza 2019) are also examined. The remainder of this introduction first provides an overview of Africa's development challenges and a definition of fragility. This then leads to the discussion of the difficulties that the authors faced when examining fragility, how they conducted their research and what their main findings are. A collaborative project should provide a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. As the editor I concluded that even though fragility constitutes the most serious impediment to development, this is neither reflected in academic research nor in the policy efforts to support fragile states. I hope that you will find this special issue also stimulating for your own thinking and research on fragility and development.