Airlines in Africa

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The regulatory framework in Africa in which international airline groups operate is far from uniform. Although several African states have embraced the principles of liberalization with regard to the African market and intra-African air transport, intercontinental routes are still often subject to strict protectionist policies. In order to protect their national carriers, many African governments continue to opt for restrictive regulations in terms of market access, seat capacity and frequency of services. Thus, air transport between Europe/the US and Africa is still based on the complex system of strict bilateral agreements negotiated separately by pairs of countries. Because such policies, by their nature, impose limitations on the volume of tourist traffic, they often have a detrimental influence on the development of tourism and thus also on regional growth in Africa. Only recently have some more liberal African governments started negotiating open skies bilateral agreements with selected European countries and the US. However, it should not be assumed that, if the liberalization and deregulation of air transportation in Africa progresses, the increased tourist traffic will automatically foster economic development in African tourist destinations. P. 26

That paragraph is from a paper by Piotr Niewiadomski.

And more

The role of national authorities can also be critical in owning, or co-owning, national airlines and related infrastructure such as airports. If this is the case, their tendency to protect national airlines and thus to opt for protective bilateral agreements can be very strong. By 1991, almost all African carriers had been owned by the state (Schlumberger 2010). Currently, as many as 25 African states have fully or partially state-owned carriers. While 20 of them are relatively weak competitors in the market, the national airlines of Egypt (Egyptair), Morocco (Royal Air Maroc), Kenya (Kenya Airways), Ethiopia (Ethiopian Airlines) and South Africa (South African Airways) are the strongest carriers in Africa (Schlumberger 2010). Out of the three focal states, only Uganda does not currently have a state-owned airline.

Regarding airports and air navigation services, the situation in Africa is even more complex. In contrast with South Africa, where airports and air navigation services were privatized in the early 1990s (Goldstein 2001; Prins and Lombard 1995), air navigation services and airports in Kenya and Uganda are still in the hands of the government. Thus, in Uganda all airports are owned by the Civil Aviation Authority of Uganda – a state agency of the Ministry of Works and Transport. In Kenya, airports are owned and managed by the Kenyan Airport Authority, while navigation services are provided by the Kenyan Civil Aviation Authority – both having the status of state corporations overseen by the Ministry of Transport. Meanwhile, in South Africa, airports are owned by the Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), whereas air navigation services are provided by the Air Traffic and Navigation Services Company, both established by the state and privatized in the 1990s (see Goldstein 2001; Prins and Lombard 1995). P. 20.

Natural Disasters: Coping Strategies (Rural Uganda)

When a natural disaster hits, the affected households try to cope with its impacts. A variety of coping strategies may be employed, from reducing current consumption to disposing of productive assets. The latter strategies are especially worrisome, as they may reduce the capacity of the household to generate income in the future, possibly leading to chronic poverty. In this paper, we use the results of a household survey in rural Uganda to ask, first, what coping strategies would tend to be employed in the event of a weather disaster, second, given that multiple strategies can be chosen, in what combinations would they tend to be employed, and, third, given that asset-liquidation strategies can be particularly harmful for the future income prospects of households, what determines their uptake? Our survey is one of the largest of its kind, containing over 3000 observations garnered by local workers using smart-phone technology. We find that in this rural sample by far the most frequently reported choice would be to sell livestock. This is rather striking, since asset-based theories would predict more reliance on strategies like eating and spending less today, which avoid disposal of productive assets. It may well be that livestock are held as a form of liquid savings to, among other things, help bounce back from a weather disaster. Yet we do find that other strategies, which might undermine future prospects, are avoided, notably selling land or the home, and disrupting the children’s education. Our econometric analysis reveals a fairly rich set of determinants of different subsets of coping strategies. Perhaps most notably, households with a more educated head are much less likely to choose coping strategies involving taking their own children out of education.

That is from a recent paper by Helgeson, Dietz, & Hochrainer. The title of the paper is "Vulnerability to Weather Disasters: The Choice of Coping Strategies in Rural Uganda."

Mobile Phones, Networks, and Migration (Uganda)

Personal networks can help rural workers find urban jobs. When information flow increases due to the expansion of mobile phone use, the new information flow may strengthen existing types of personal network, such as ethnic networks, or provide opportunities to those who were previously outside of these networks. We examine the combined impacts of mobile phone use and personal networks by using panel data from 856 households in 94 communities in rural Uganda, where the number of communities with mobile network coverage increased from 41 to 87 communities over a 2-year period between the first and second surveys, conducted in 2003 and 2005, respectively. We find first that the possession of mobile phone handsets at the household level increases an individual's chance of leaving his or her rural village to find a job, and second, that mobile phone use increases the chance that an individual will choose migration to a greater degree for individuals who belong to a smaller ethnic group than to a larger group in the capital city, Kampala.

That is from the paper "The impacts of mobile phone and personal networks on migration: evidence from Uganda" by Megumi Muto, published in the recent number of the Journal of African Economies (November 2012). A draft is here. 

That number of the Journal is a special issue on impact evaluation (IE) in Africa. See a good post by Justin Sandefur on IE here. 

HT: @m_clem

Fake Drugs in Africa. What to do?

This new paper by Björkman-Nyqvist, Svensson, and Yanagizawa-Drott (August 2012) says: 

We collect drug samples from a large set of local markets in Uganda using covert shoppers and employ Raman spectroscopy to test for drug quality. We find that 37 percent of the local outlets sell fake antimalarial drugs.

What to do about it? [The World Health Organization estimates that they account for 30% of all medicines on sale, and kill up to 2,000 people daily worldwide]. 

. . . [T]he entry of high quality sellers [such as NGOs] decreased the share of fake drugs sold by the incumbents by approximately 50 percent.

Currently some people wrongly believe that malaria can be transmitted by interacting with infected people, or by eating fruits contaminated with mosquito eggs. This leads to misdiagnosis and to take fake medicine. Education can help eliminate the mistaken views.

See here a social entrepreneur facing the problem. 

[I can recognize the fake one?] Let's see:

The picture is taken from the paper.