Tito Yepes

• Research Associate at Fedesarrollo

Introduction During the first years of the century Africa experienced one of the highest growth rates in the world, even overcoming the financial crisis. The regional annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate climbed from 3% before 2000 to 6.5% in 2007. However during the following period and recent crisis, falling commodity prices, and lower...

Introduction The idea that Africa's infrastructure gap is enormous and poses a threat to development has reached a consensus in the international development community and African governments alike. Less than 40% of the continent's population has access to electricity, about a third of the rural population has access to roads and only 5% of agricul...

Introduction Despite significant differences between countries, in general Africa requires better quality and more infrastructure vis-à-vis its progress in other development areas. Not only is Africa's level of infrastructure endowment low, but the continent also faces higher access costs for all infrastructure services compared with other developi...

Introduction This chapter outlines some of the principal ongoing infrastructure challenges faced by the East African sub-region, with a particular focus on water, sanitation, energy, surface transport and information and communications technology (ICT). The progress made to date is evaluated in the light of recent studies and new data. At the sub-r...

Introduction Achieving sustainable economic growth, as a means of lifting the continent out of poverty, is the principal objective of Africa's infrastructure agenda. The achievement of this goal relies on the productivity of firms and on ensuring better living conditions for individuals across the continent. Accordingly, strengthening the foundatio...

Introduction The 21st century will prove to be of great importance to African countries, as they are confronted with the challenge of coping with an accelerated urbanization process, while simultaneously striving to take advantage of the opportunity to become one of the world's largest agricultural producers. The ability of countries to achieve cer...

Introduction Rural activities remain highly relevant to the overall development process of Sub-Saharan Africa. The African population is mainly located in rural areas, ranging from 53% to 78% of the population in the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and the East African Community (EAC) respectively. Almost two-thirds of the labo...

Africa is undergoing a rapid urban transition and is set to be the fastest urbanizing region in the coming decades. This shift has profound implications for achieving the continental and global targets for inclusive growth and transformation. Theory and global experience show that urbanization and structural transformation are closely linked—but le...

A wide range of economic activities take place in rural Africa and despite their important, little is yet known about their productivity. Both farm and non-farm enterprises provide a variety of products and services to the rural population. For example, the relative contribution of the non-farm economy to household income is significant and known t...

There are huge variations in the levels of infrastructure development in African countries and the five regions of Central, Southern, West, North and East. Chapter Nine outlines some of the principal ongoing infrastructure challenges from a regional perspective by focusing on the East African sub-region. Particular focus is put on water, sanitation...

Given some of the key infrastructure challenges facing the continent, what is needed is a regionally integrated approach to confront these infrastructure challenges. The two main pillars of the infrastructure agenda are: (i) to strengthen the foundations for higher productivity in the main cities and (ii) to ensure a more even distribution of basic...

Africa faces difficult water/sanitation legacies in the form of high hydrological variability and a multiplicity of transboundary river basins alongside poor sanitation. These challenges impeded the continent’s economic growth. Balanced investments in water resource and sanitation infrastructure and institutions are needed to increase productive us...

Regional infrastructure is one aspect of broader regional integration. In contrast to economic or political integration, however, cooperation in infrastructure provision is easier to achieve, because benefits are more clearly defined, and countries need to cede less sovereignty. Regional infrastructure cooperation is therefore an effective initial...

Africa’s middle class and urban consumption are on the rise, presenting a major opportunity for industrialization. Urban development also creates demand for public infrastructure. In the absence of modern infrastructure services, the next best option would be to reach households with lower-cost, second-best solutions, such as standposts, improved l...

There is a widespread recognition that Africa has to embark on strategies for sustainable and inclusive development. African economies have to evolve in their levels of development including the associated structure of factor endowments. However, each such structure requires corresponding infrastructure (both “hard” and “soft”) to circumscribe its...

In the next 10 years or so, the infrastructure sector has the potential to generate significant employment. This paper estimates annual job creation of about 2.0 million in direct jobs and 2.5 million in direct, indirect and induced infrastructure-related jobs just by meeting the infrastructure investment needs of about 6.9 percent of gross domesti...

Introducción. Promover la mayor integración física en las Américas tiene como objetivo desencadenar efectos cascada sobre la productividad, el comercio intrarregional y la inserción de los países en la economía mundial. La adecuación y expansión de la infraestructura regional, sub-regional y nacional como carreteras, ferrocarriles, puertos, aeropue...

The paper's objective is to explain factors underlying Africa's weak infrastructure endowment and to identify suitable infrastructure goals for the region based on benchmarking against international peers. The authors use a dataset covering the stocks of key infrastructure-including information and communication technology (ICT), power, roads, and...

The paper's objective is to explain factors underlying Africa's weak infrastructure endowment and to identify suitable infrastructure goals for the region based on benchmarking against international peers. The authors use a dataset covering the stocks of key infrastructure-including information and communication technology (ICT), power, roads, and...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the determinants of three child-health outcomes related to the Millennium Development Goals: the infant mortality rate, the child mortality rate, and the prevalence of malnutrition. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys, the paper goes beyond traditional crosscountry regressions by exploiting th...

Given the relatively small segment of the population that faces genuine affordability problems in Latin America, there appears to be a promising case for using targeted subsidies to reconcile the cost recovery objective with social protection concerns. Social tariff schemes of various kinds are already widespread in Latin America, but they suffer f...

There are some specific transport policies that help fighting poverty and improving living standards of people in the developing cities. This paper shows how the City of Bogotá has implemented this type of policies, especially with the TransMilenio Bus Rapid Transit System (BRT), and indicates some impacts on the poor. Bogotá’s urban poor, with ave...

Leipziger, Fay, Wodon, and Yepes provide an empirical analysis of the determinants of three child-health outcomes related to the Millennium Development Goals: the infant mortality rate, the child mortality rate, and the prevalence of malnutrition. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys, they go beyond traditional cross-country regressions b...

The authors estimate demand for infrastructure services over the first decade of the new millennium based on a model that relates demand for infrastructure with the structural change and growth in income the world is expected to undergo between now and 2010. It should be noted that predictions are based on estimated demand rather than on any absolu...

What are the prospects for economic development in lagging sub-national regions? What are the roles of public infrastructure investments and fiscal incentives in influencing the location and performance of industrial activity? To examine these questions, the authors estimate a spatial profit function for industrial activity in Brazil that explicitl...