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1. How reliable are national accounts estimates of agricultural output?

Author:
Sam Jones and Marcelo Mucocana
Publication Date:
02-2025
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Measurement errors in macroeconomic aggregates such as GDP have been widely lamented, particularly in low-income contexts. This study investigates the reliability of one component of national accounts, agricultural sector output. Focusing first on the case of Mozambique, we use a series of 12 harmonized national agricultural micro-surveys to construct estimates of gross annual output in the sector. Compared to corresponding national accounts values for the period 2002–20, the micro-survey estimates are about 50% lower. A decomposition exercise indicates this gap is primarily driven by differences in base year levels, offset by higher rates of inflation observed in survey-based producer prices. Triangulating these estimates using household budget surveys, market price, and FAO production data, we find consistent support for the agricultural micro-survey estimates, suggesting real rates of total GDP growth may have been overestimated by 1 percentage point over the period. A cross-country comparison of national accounts and FAO production data indicates positive differences between estimates of agricultural output from the two sources are not unique to Mozambique, but with larger discrepancies among lower-income countries. Systematic investment in reliable and timely agricultural statistics is essential to track progress in the sector.
Topic:
Agriculture, GDP, Macroeconomics, and Survey
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

2. Social protection for Mozambique’s elderly: History, structure, and potential effectiveness

Author:
Sara Almeida, Hanna Berkel, Sam Jones, Patricia Justino, and Telça Massingue
Publication Date:
03-2025
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This study assesses the effectiveness of Mozambique's flagship social pension programme, the elderly component of the Programa de Subsídio Social Básico (PSSB). Focusing on three key criteria— programme targeting, reliability, and materiality—we combine administrative data on the universe of beneficiaries with the complete records of the 2017 Population and Housing Census. Merging these datasets at the localidade level, we provide a highly granular view of programme coverage rates and payment delivery regularity. We estimate that in the best case with zero targeting errors, the PSSB-Elderly programme reaches two-thirds of its target group. However, significant regional disparities persist, including undercoverage in poorer regions. Additionally, we document substantial delays in payments since 2023, as well as various inaccuracies in the beneficiary registry. These findings underscore the importance of simple and robust designs for social protection in resource-constrained contexts. They also suggest that expanding programme coverage towards a quasi-universal subsidy in high-poverty locations merits serious consideration.
Topic:
Poverty, Public Policy, Pension, and Payment Systems
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

3. Cultivating change: the long-term impact of forced labour in Mozambique

Author:
Margherita Bove, Rute Martins Caeiro, Rachel Coelho, Sam Jones, and Patricia Justino
Publication Date:
02-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Following the abolition of slavery, various forms of compulsory labour were adopted by colonial powers to develop their economies. This paper analyses the contemporary consequences of compulsory cotton production—a forced labour system that operated in colonial Mozambique from 1926 to 1961. During this period, the Portuguese colonial government granted geographic concessions to private companies, within which smallholder farmers were forced to cultivate cotton for payment in cash. Women bore the brunt of this regime, but in doing so often took on responsibilities traditionally reserved for men and engaged in active resistance strategies. Employing a spatial regression discontinuity, we explore the enduring impact of this exposure to forced cotton cultivation on present-day human and social capital, focusing specifically on rural southern Mozambique. Our estimation strategy relies on the arbitrarily defined historical borders of the concessions, which reflected the tendency of concessionaires to absorb as much territory as possible, often ignoring agronomic conditions. Drawing on bespoke individual-level survey data collected along the concession border, we find lower educational outcomes among women in former concession areas. However, this is counterbalanced by positive effects on social capital, in the form of higher levels of civil participation, more progressive attitudes towards gender norms, and an increased presence of women in leadership positions. These results suggest that exogenous ruptures that push women outside traditional boundaries can help to reinforce their role in society.
Topic:
History, Women, Colonialism, Human Capital, Social Capital, Forced Labor, and Cotton
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

4. The impact of COVID-19 on urban informal workers in Maputo

Author:
Nilifer Anaç, Eva-Maria Egger, Sam Jones, Ricardo Santos, and Alex Warren-Rodriguez
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Informal self-employed traders in developing countries are vulnerable to shocks as they often lack access to social insurance or formal finance. This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these urban traders in the capital of Mozambique, Maputo. Drawing on longitudinal phone survey data over six months, we find they experienced significant negative shocks to earnings, leading to a reduction in savings as well as worsening food security and assets. Individuals simultaneously affected by a municipal policy to remove informal traders from a central market were hit particularly hard as they lost their clients and market stalls. We simulate that a cash transfer equivalent to the government’s proposed COVID-19 response would have significantly buffered these shocks. The findings point to the need for a more shock-responsive social protection system, easy access to liquidity and provision of market infrastructure for informal traders.
Topic:
Urban, Trade, COVID-19, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

5. Labour market effects of digital matching platforms: Experimental evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

Author:
Sam Jones and Kunal Sen
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Can digital labour market platforms reduce search frictions in either formal or informal labour markets? We study this question using a randomized experiment embedded in a tracer study of the work transitions of graduates from technical and vocational colleges in Mozambique. We implement an encouragement design, inviting graduates by SMS to join one of two local digital platforms: Biscate, a site to find freelancers for informal manual tasks; and Emprego, a conventional formal jobs website. In contrast to positive estimates of the contribution of both platforms to job outcomes from naïve (per-treatment) estimates, both intent-to-treat and complier average treatment effects are consistently zero in the full sample, while the impact on life satisfaction is negative. However, use of the informal jobs platform leads to better work outcomes for women, especially those with manual qualifications, for whom earnings rise by over 50 per cent.
Topic:
Education, Labor Issues, Digital Economy, and Unemployment
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

6. What drove the profitability of colonial firms? Labour coercion and trade preferences on the Sena Sugar Estates (1920–74)

Author:
Sam Jones and Peter Gibbon
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The magnitude of returns to colonial-era investments in Africa has been addressed in an extensive literature, as have the nature and legacies of extractive colonial institutions. However, the link between these institutions and the profitability of firms remains unclear. We reconstruct the annual financial records of Sena Sugar Estates in Portuguese East Africa (today’s Mozambique) over the period 1920–74 to probe the contributions of forced labour and preferential trade arrangements to the performance of the firm. We show that Sena Sugar Estates achieved stable and solid returns to capital, comparable in size to a range of domestic UK firms. Counterfactual simulations suggest that the firm’s profitability was highly dependent on sustained access to cheap labour, but generally was not so dependent on trade preferences. At the same time, a production function analysis suggests that higher reliance on rents from forced labour was associated with lower total factor productivity at the Estates. This helps explain why extractive institutions did not translate into ‘super-profits’.
Topic:
History, Colonialism, Trade, Sugar, and Forced Labor
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

7. Whither aid? Financing development in Mozambique

Author:
Sam Jones
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Careful consideration of the appropriate level and composition of aggregate public spending is vital in low income countries, especially in the presence of large volumes of foreign aid. Not only can expansion of the public sector weaken economic growth, but also provision of public services may be difficult to re­trench. These issues are relevant to Mozambique as the share of government in GDP already is comparatively high and strategic management of aggregate public spending historically has been weak. A new long-term macroeconomic model quantifies the implications of alternative aggregate spending profiles. It shows that small increases in minimum levels of government spending correspond to large increases in the duration to aid independence. Sharp reductions in aid availability would necessitate significant fiscal and economic adjustments, including cuts in real public spending per capita. For this reason, there is no room for complacency as regards the future of development finance to Mozambique.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Humanitarian Aid, International Political Economy, Poverty, and Third World
Political Geography:
Africa

8. Alternative development financing mechanisms: pre-crisis trends and post-crisis outlook

Author:
Sam Jones
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
External financial flows have long held a central place in debates about how to promote socio-economic development in poor countries. Alternative development theories typically map into different views regarding the desirable form and volume of external inflows. Over the past decade, development policy has witnessed a clear shift towards a poverty reduction agenda. Unsurprisingly, this has been accompanied by changes in views concerning development finance. A dominant refrain of the present agenda is that 'traditional' approaches to development finance, characterised by official bilateral and multilateral assistance to discrete projects through a combination of loans and credits, have been inadequate. In response, reforms of traditional aid and alternative approaches to financing have been advocated.
Topic:
Development, Humanitarian Aid, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa

9. Revenue effects of participation in smallholder organic cocoa production in tropical Africa: A case study

Author:
Sam Jones, Peter Gibbon, and Yumiao Lin
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
This paper examines the revenue effects of certified organic contract farming and of use of organic farming methods in a tropical African context. These are compared with 'organic by default' conventional farming systems without contractual relations. Survey data from a medium-size cocoa-vanilla contract farming scheme in Uganda is reported using a standard OLS regression and propensity score matching approaches. The analysis finds that there are positive revenue effects for the certified crops from both participation and, more modestly, from using organic farming techniques.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa

10. From bear to bull? Sub-Saharan Africa and Global Capital Markets

Author:
Sam Jones
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The current boom in global commodity prices and the expansion of Chinese interests in sub-Saharan Africa are part of a general warming of external investors to the region. This policy brief examines trends in commercial financial instruments such as equities, bonds and commercial bank lending and their impact on economic development. It reviews the nature and behaviour of these instruments in developing countries compared with more traditional development finance, such as foreign aid. This provides a foundation for analysing past and present trends in sub-Saharan Africa. It is argued that, like many other low income countries in the past, sub-Saharan Africa has received negligible inflows of external commercial financing. If anything, the region has been additionally excluded from these flows due to very weak levels of financial sector development even compared to other low income countries. At the same time, recent changes in global and domestic conditions mean that the situation is evolving rapidly. There is mounting evidence to show that many economies in sub-Saharan Africa are enjoying significantly expanded access to commercial external capital flows. Given good prospects that this trend will continue, the playing field for traditional donors is likely to alter significantly. The brief concludes by reflecting on how donors might respond to these emerging policy challenges.
Topic:
Development, Markets, and Non-Governmental Organization
Political Geography:
Africa and China