Call for Book Chapters: "Essentials Issues on African Development: Tackling Old Challenges With New Strategies”

Vernon Press invites book chapter proposals for the forthcoming edited volume titled "Essentials Issues on African Development: Tackling Old Challenges With New Strategies”, edited by Stephen Armah.

While other parts of the world are experiencing an aging and declining population, Africa is home to a very young and growing population. A large and growing young population is not necessarily a bad thing especially if the young population has access to quality education, excellent health services and relevant capital for effective production. Unfortunately, Africa lacks access to capital and also houses a large share of the world's poor. Africa's population is projected to continue to increase as will Africa's share of the global population that is poor. By 2050 Africa is projected to be home to 90% of the world's poor and given the continent’s well-documented relatively lower productivity, weak institutions and economic stability challenges this is a serious and well-known issue. Efforts must be made to take advantage of Africa's changing population structure which is currently benefiting from improved child health to turn a potential demographic disaster into a demographic dividend where the young and well-trained population will transform the economy.

The trajectory of poverty in Africa is in direct contrast to that of China which contained the largest share of the world’s poor 40 years ago but has essentially eradicated poverty. China did this using intentional state-led strategies backed by strong economic growth and a central government with the political will to reduce poverty under the leadership of Xi Jinping. The Chinese strategy may not necessarily work for Africa, but China has shown it is possible to eradicate poverty through the United Nations's Sustainable Development Goals

In comparison, most African countries are still bedeviled by old development challenges such as inflation, corruption, currency crisis, debt crisis, rural-urban migration, low productivity and dependence on primary commodity products with inelastic supply elasticities and volatile world prices, undermining the stability of their economies. These problems are clearly not new.  however, they have persisted for a long time and many who work on African development still struggle to fathom ways to improve the situation for African countries.

The Asian Tigers (Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan) demonstrated that effective leadership, quality education, pro-poor policies and action and effective development strategies that promote sustained economic growth and effective redistribution facilitated the escape from poverty for millions of people in these Asian countries. Context-relevant strategies designed to strengthen institutions, reduce poverty and enhance productivity were smartly implemented in these countries. Therefore, to help Africans escape poverty it is essential to solve persistent albeit old and well-known problems that undermine development as well as design effective context-relevant strategies that reduce poverty and facilitate the growth of African economies.

Botswana's relative success as an African country, with its strong performance in keeping corruption contained and growth strong offers hope for Africa as in many ways the Botswana story does have parallels with the Singapore story implying useful lessons for Africa. Further, although some scholars have pointed to the Resource Cure associated with commodity dependence that has bedeviled African countries dependent on primary commodity export revenue, Botswana proves this need not be the case as it has used mineral resources to prosper.  It is also well known that non-African oil revenue-dependent countries like Norway, Dubai and Qatar have used oil wealth as a catalyst to transform and diversify their economies so these countries should have useful lessons for commodity export revenue-dependent African countries.

This book will focus on contemporaneous but persistent and well-known challenges of African development and discuss contest-relevant solutions to perennial economic challenges while collating innovative strategies to nurture economic growth and reduce corruption and development in a context-relevant sense. To that extent the call for papers is on the theme: "Discussing Innovative, effective, context-relevant strategies for tackling perennial developmental problems and challenges facing SSA countries." The central theme of the book relates to how to effectively tackle old and well-known challenges of African development still holding Africa back.

 The proposed topics the book will cover include:

- Persistent problems of SSA development: Inflation, corruption, Debt, Currency crisis, and weak institutions

- Corruption in SSA countries: Causes, consequences, and Eradication

- Currency Crisis in Anglophone African Countries

- Inflation and Central Bank independence in SSA

- Debt Crisis Again and a Re-invitation of the IMF and World Bank for Africa

- Currency Boards and the Problem of Inflation in SSA

- Currency Substitution, Dollarization, and inflation in SSA

- Leadership and Development - Lessons for Africa from China and the Asian Tigers

- The Role of China in SSA and Lessons from Chinese Development for Africa

- Lessons from the Asian Tigers for Africa

- Lessons from Norway for Africa's Oil exporters.

- Lessons from Qatar and Dubai for commodity revenue-dependent SSA countries

- The Demographic Dividend and Africa's opportunity to change the narrative

- Effective Context Relevant Development Strategies for SSA

Timeline:

Deadline for abstract submissions: July 1, 2024

Deadline for Acceptance notification: July 15, 2024

Deadline for Full paper submission: September 20, 2024

Please submit the abstracts to the volume editor, Stephen Armah searmah@ashesi.edu.gh.