This paper analyses the ‘ripple’ effect of house prices in large-, medium- and small-sized houses of five major metropolitan areas of South Africa—namely, Cape Town, Durban Unicity, Greater Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth/Uitenhage and Pretoria—based on available quarterly data covering the period of 1966:Q1 to 2010:Q1.

Empirical studies across many developing countries routinely document a positive correlation between participation in rural nonfarm employment and households’ wealth or income.

Climate change is a serious threat to Africa, in general, and sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, as it is expected to have significant economic, social, and environmental impacts.

We use survey data to investigate how urban households in Ethiopia coped with the food price shock in 2008. Qualitative data indicate that the high food price inflation was by far the most adverse economic shock between 2004 and 2008, and that a significant proportion of households had to adjust food consumption in response. Regression results indicate that households with low asset levels, and casual workers, were particularly adversely affected by high food prices.

Africa has considerable reserves of fossil fuels of all kinds: oil, coal and natural gas. Much of this resource is either utilised outside of Africa or some of the resource is not developed at all for use within the continent. Meanwhile, there are concerns that the future of fossil fuel use will need to take place in the context of a low carbon development pathway.

Through rapid assessment of existing literature and review of policy and other official documents, the report synthesizes the existing knowledge and gaps on policies and institutions and identifies key research issues that need in-depth study.

This study undertook an assessment and gap analysis of the institutional arrangements for improved land and water management in the Tana and Beles Sub-basins highlands of the Blue Nile Basin. We explored the mandates and design features of the major land- and water-related institutional arrangements. Focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and a literature review were used in the analysis.

We investigate attitudes toward positionality among rural farmers in Northern Ethiopia using a survey experiment.

On average, we find very low positional concerns both for income per se and for income from aid projects. The results support the claim that positional concerns are positively correlated with absolute level of income. The implications of our results on implementation of aid projects are discussed.