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171. Does Digital Divide or Provide? The Impact of Cell Phones on Grain Markets in Niger

Author:
Jenny C. Aker
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Due partly to costly information, price dispersion across markets is common in developed and developing countries. Between 2001 and 2006, cell phone service was phased in throughout Niger, providing an alternative and cheaper search technology to grain traders and other market actors. Weconstruct a novel theoretical model of sequential search, in which traders engage in optimal search for the maximum sales price, net transport costs. The model predicts that cell phones will increase traders' reservation sales prices and the number of markets over which they search, leading to a reduction in price dispersion across markets. To test the predictions of the theoretical model, we use a unique market and trader dataset from Niger that combines data on prices, transport costs, rainfall and grain production with cell phone access and trader behavior. We first exploit the quasi-experimental nature of cell phone coverage to estimate the impact of the introduction of information technology on market performance. The results provide evidence that cell phones reduce grain price dispersion across markets by a minimum of 6.4 percent and reduce intra-annual price variation by 12 percent. Cell phones have a greater impact on price dispersion for market pairs that are farther away, and for those with lower road quality. This effect becomes larger as a higher percentage of markets have cell phone coverage. We provide empirical evidence in support of specific mechanisms that partially explain the impact of cell phones on market performance. Robustness checks suggest that the results are not driven by selection on unobservables, nor are they solely a result of general equilibrium effects. Calculations of the four-firm concentration index suggest that the grain market structure is competitive, so the observed reductions in price dispersion are not due to greater market collusion. The primary mechanism by which cell phones affect market-level outcomes appears to be a reduction in search costs, as grain traders operating in markets with cell phone coverage search over a greater number of markets and sell in more markets. The results suggest that cell phones improved consumer and trader welfare in Niger.
Topic:
Agriculture, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

172. Rainfall Shocks, Markets, and Food Crises: Evidence from the Sahel

Author:
Jenny C. Aker
Publication Date:
12-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
How do markets respond to extreme rainfall in West Africa? This paper examines the effect of weather on grain market performance in Niger, a country increasingly affected by drought and severe food crises over the past two decades. Using a dataset that combines information on rainfall, agricultural production, prices and transaction costs, I exploit rainfall variation to estimate the impact of drought on grain market performance between 1997 and 2006. Time series tests suggest that grain markets in Niger respond to supply shocks and that markets are more integrated during drought years. Exploiting the exogeneity of extreme rainfall in a difference-in-differences framework supports these findings: drought reduces grain price dispersion across markets. This impact is stronger as a higher percentage of markets are affected by drought, as was the case in 2004/2005, the year of a severe food crisis. The results suggest that early warning systems in West Africa should focus on the spatial impact of drought at the sub-regional level, as well as monitor prices in key forecasting markets during the harvest period.
Topic:
Agriculture, International Political Economy, and Markets
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

173. The Internationalization of Oil Violence in the Niger Delta of Nigeria

Author:
Victor Ojakorotu
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations
Institution:
Center for International Conflict Resolution at Yalova University
Abstract:
This paper unpacks the crisis in the Niger Delta of Nigeria with reference to its external dimensions by which is meant the involvement of international non-governmental organisations in the politics of local environmental governance. It takes as its point of departure the events (in the 1990s) that underpinned the international community's engagement with an issue that could have been regarded as Nigeria's domestic affair and follows with an assessment of the impact of internationalisation of the crisis on the major actors in the region. It is noted that the crisis in the Niger Delta has been predicated for over four decades on a number of complex issues in Nigeria's geo-political landscape. The emergence of organized pressure groups (in the early 1990s) and their protestations against human rights abuses and environmental problems in the region added a 'new' dimension to the crisis. In tackling its thematic concern, this paper interrogates the involvement of the international civil society in the Niger Delta and concludes with an appraisal of the extent to which the internationalisation of the crisis engendered both attitudinal and policy shifts on the part of the main actors.
Topic:
Political Violence, Civil Society, and Oil
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

174. Global (Re)vision: Musical Imagination in African America

Author:
Ingrid Monson
Publication Date:
08-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
African American music has always been global, for it would never have come into being without that international trade in human beings known as the Atlantic slave trade. As historians of the slave trade have noted, Americans of African descent came from a variety of ethnic groups primarily from Central and West Africa. Many stopped first in the Caribbean before being transported for sale in various American cities of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. In the United States, unlike in the Caribbean, large groups of enslaved Africans from the same cultural group often did not reside together, which resulted in a synthesizing of diverse African cultural practices and values. People taken from what was then known as Senegambia (present day Senegal and Guinea) predominated numerically in the 17th century, but by the end of the North American slave trade approximately 40% of Africans in America came from central Africa (present day Cameroon, Gabon, both Congos, Central African Republic, Angola), 30% from the Gold Coast and Bight of Benin (present day Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Benin), 15% from Senegambia, and 15% from elsewhere on the continent. As Robert Farris Thompson's book Flash of the Spirit noted long ago, many traces of Yoruba, Kongo, and Mande cultural expression, religion, and visual arts can be found in North America.
Political Geography:
Africa, America, North America, and Nigeria

175. Africa's missing billions: International arms flows and the cost of conflict

Publication Date:
10-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
For the first time, IANSA, Oxfam, and Safeworld have estimated the economic cost of armed conflict to Africa's development. Around $300bn since 1990 has been lost by Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Crime, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Africa, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Ghana

176. Nigeria's Economic Reforms Progress and Challenges

Author:
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Philip Osafo-Kwaako
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
Following years of economic stagnation, Nigeria embarked on a comprehensive reform program during the second term of the Obasanjo administration. The program was based on the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) and focused on four main areas: improving the macroeconomic environment, pursuing structural reforms, strengthening public expenditure management, and implementing institutional and governance reforms. This paper reviews Nigeria's recent experience with economic reforms and outlines major policy measures that have been implemented. Although there have been notable achievements under the program, significant challenges exist, particularly in translating the benefits of reforms into welfare improvements for citizens, in improving the domestic business environment, and in extending reform policies to states and local governments. Consequently, we argue that the recent reform program must be viewed as the initial steps of a much longer journey of economic recovery and sustained growth. This paper concludes by outlining a number of outstanding issues that future Nigerian administrations must address.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

177. Nigeria: Elections and Continuing Challenges

Author:
Robert I. Rotberg
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Nigeria's vital importance for Africa's political development, for U.S. and European interests, and for world order cannot be exaggerated. Nigeria's sheer aggregate numbers—possibly as many as 150 million of the full continent's 800 million—and its proportionate weight in sub-Saharan Africa' s troubled affairs, make the country's continuing evolution from military dictatorship to stable, sustained democracy critical.
Topic:
Democratization and Economics
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and Nigeria

178. A Nigerian Perspective on the 2007 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections Results From Pre- And Post- Election Surveys.

Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
This report documents the opinions of the Nigerian people at an important time in their country's history—just before and after the historic elections that resulted in Nigeria's first ever hand over in power between one elected civilian ruler to another elected civilian. Overall, Nigerians show optimism in their society, the institutions that comprise it, and the future direction in which newly elected leaders will take them. At the same time, many show caution toward and disappointment in some aspects of government, especially when evaluating the conduct of the recent elections. Here is a summary of the key findings of IFES' pre- and post- election surveys. A more detailed examination of the results will follow in the subsequent sections.
Topic:
Civil Society, Democratization, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

179. Global Public Health and Biosecurity: Managing Twenty-First Century Risks

Author:
Margaret E. Kruk
Publication Date:
07-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
In this first decade of the twenty-first century, we have reason both to commend and to decry the state of human health and our ability to improve it. We have achieved a maximum life expectancy of eighty-six years and have found a way to manage, though not cure, the most deadly epidemic since the Black Plague, AIDS. We can keep up with mutating viruses to produce a new flu vaccine every year and we can save babies born only twenty-three weeks into a pregnancy. Yet that is only half the picture. We also live in a world where a Nigerian newborn has a nearly one in five chance of dying before reaching age five and her mother a one in sixteen chance of dying in one of her pregnancies. Life expectancy in parts of sub-Saharan Africa has fallen below forty years. We have experienced remarkable scientific advances over the past fifty years, although we have not been able to apply many of these to the bedside or to public health policy. And so we have powerful genetic tools to study the components of viral RNA but cannot predict when or even if the bird flu will spread to humans.
Topic:
International Relations, Globalization, Health, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

180. Nigeria: Ending Unrest in the Niger Delta

Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
The Niger Delta is again at risk of sliding into chaos. The 29 May 2007 inauguration of new federal and state governments offered an opportunity to resolve longstanding conflicts afflicting the oil-rich, deeply impoverished region. Six months later, the opportunity is unravelling amid new violence and criminality. Decisive action is necessary to stop militant violence and criminal hostage-taking, initiate quick-impact development projects that can build public confidence in President Umaru Yar'Adua's administration and tackle constitutional and legal issues that have fuelled unrest in the region.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and Development
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria