The investment requirements to achieve the United Nations’ universal electricity access goal by 2030 are estimated at 640 billion USD. The assumption underlying this goal is that electrification contributes to poverty alleviation in many regards. In recent years, a body of literature has emerged that widely confirms this positive poverty impact assumption. Most of these studies, however, are based on data from Asia and Latin America. This paper challenges the transferability of impact findings in the literature to the African context.

A linear public good experiment adopted from Holt and Laury [1997. Classroom games: Voluntary provision of a public good. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 11(4), 209–215.] has been employed to investigate strategic behaviour in pollution abatement among African climate decision-makers. The experiment consisted of three groups, of which groups 2 and 3 received one and two treatments, respectively.

Abstract: This paper explores the link between the gender of a household head and food security in rural Kenya. The results show that the food security gap between male-headed households (MHHs) and female-headed households (FHHs) is explained by their differences in observable and unobservable characteristics. FHHs’ food security status would have been higher than it is now if the returns (coefficients) on their observed characteristics had been the same as the returns on the MHHs’ characteristics.

Forest tenure reforms are occurring in many developing countries around the world. These reforms typically include devolution of forest lands to local people and communities, which has attracted a great deal of attention and interest. While the nature and level of devolution vary by country, all have potentially important implications for resource allocation, local ecosystem services, livelihoods and climate change. 

This paper assesses rural households’ decision to use improved maize varieties in Malawi and examines its impact on household welfare using a three-year household panel data.

Climate change is one of the most important challenges facing the world in general and Africa in particular. This article examines economic costs of climate change and climate finance with a focus on Africa.

Economic growth in industrialized countries over the past few decades did not result in improved subjective well-being (SWB) of citizens.

This paper investigates impact heterogeneity in the adoption of improved maize varieties using data from rural Tanzania. We used a generalized propensity-score matching methodology, complemented with a parametric econometric method to check the robustness of results.

Using data spanning 15 years, we study subjective and consumption poverty in urban Ethiopia. Despite rapid economic growth and declining consumption poverty, subjective poverty remains largely unchanged.

This is a PhD dissertation by Haileselassie Medhin and containing seven self-contained papers: