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Publication - Project Report
Female managers and well-being in the Bangladeshi garment industry
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Blog post
Worker turnover and job flows in the formal private sector of Ethiopia
Creating a sufficient number of stable and well-paying jobs remains a major challenge for African economies. Urban labour markets in the region are marked by high informality and unemployment rates, and most jobs offer minimum job security and typically very low wages. Indeed in Ethiopia, the informal economy is estimated to account for over 38% of GDP with data from the...
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Publication - Project Report
Supply chain trade in East Africa
Deeper regional integration is the main objective of the recently launched Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Supply chain trade both at the level of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and across RECs are to spearhead the AfCFTA. Indicators of Global Value Chains (GVC) participation show that even though the EAC and other African RECs have increased their...
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Blog post
Improving labour standards: Enforcement interventions by multinationals in Bangladesh
When MNCs enforce garment factory Safety Committee law on external suppliers, compliance and safety indicators improve. Importantly, the degree to which they improve depends on the supplier’s organisational capacity. In developing countries, governments often lack the capacity or the political will to update and enforce regulations (Dal Bó and Finan, 2016), including...
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Publication - Policy Brief
The review of the Common External Tariff of the East African Community: Options for strengthening Uganda’s negotiating position
The East African Community is a customs union governed by a Common External Tariff (CET). The CET is currently under review, with members considering higher rates of external protection and an increase in the number of tariff bands. Uganda proposes to expand the current three-band structure of the CET (0, 10 and 25 %) by an additional 5 % rate and a new peak rate of...
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Blog post
West Africa’s artisanal gold mining sector: An overlooked driver of development?
Most recent research on mining sector policy reform in West Africa has focused on the potential of large-scale multinational mining companies to transform developing economies. There has been comparatively less analysis of the economic impact of mining activities carried out informally and at a micro-scale. The artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector – informal, low...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Understanding productivity dispersion: Evidence from a new survey of manufacturing firms in Uganda
There are large productivity differences across firms in developing countries, even within the same sector and region. Understanding what contributes to such differences in productivity is important for designing policies to help low productivity firms grow. This project implemented a representative survey of over 1,000 manufacturing firms in Uganda to quantify...
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Blog post
Tanzania’s textiles and apparel: Technology demand and the role of South-South trade
Technological progress and innovation are critical for long-term economic growth. Sub-Saharan Africa, however, continues to show huge productivity differentials, as firms operate with large gaps from available best practices in more advanced economies. Adopting and adaptation of more efficient and effective technology to the context and specificities of the local economy...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Tracking constraints to micro-entrepreneurship using IVR technology: Results from a pilot study in Kenya and Uganda
Current data collection exercises fail to capture the heterogeneity of entrepreneurs in developing countries in terms of scale. This project proposes a research agenda around understanding the constraints faced by micro-entrepreneurs, both formal and informal, through a series of mobile-based surveys (using IVR technology) delivered to small firms and...