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Publications (37)
![Man's hand holding Tanzanian currency. Image: Imani Nsamila / UNU-WIDER](/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_150x200/public/Blog/Image/SWF-blog-cover-image.jpg?itok=REfPvp_R)
Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) have become a symbol of national success and a means for global, commercial and geopolitical influence. But how well do they contribute to national development goals? Furthermore, global decarbonization threatens the future of many fossil fuel-financed SWFs. Here, we...
![Fiscal states natural resources blog 2023. Image: Jean Mandela / Zambia](/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_150x200/public/Natural-resources-blog-image.jpg?itok=fjO_-V1G)
The post-COVID-19 economic recovery and Russia’s war with Ukraine have caused some natural resource prices to reach new highs. Although forecasting the price of internationally-traded commodities is notoriously difficult, recent estimates suggest that prices will remain high through 2024. The high...
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The green energy transition is projected to cause an increase in metal demand. Will this demand lead to the opening of deep-seabed mining? As of now, seabed mining has been limited to shallow waters, but could mineral-rich deep seabeds provide an opportunity for the developing world? Deep-seabed...
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The price and availability of energy is fundamental to the health of the global economy. The Russia–Ukraine war is intensifying an energy shock that began unfolding as the prices for oil, natural gas and coal started to recover from a COVID-19-induced slump. Energy importers among the low-income...
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– Three lessons to inform next steps
At the start of the last decade, Mozambique’s prospects looked stellar. Following from the early 1990s, when peace finally arrived after a devastating and protracted armed conflict, this vast country in Southern Africa could look back proudly on a sustained period of rapid growth and poverty...
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– Natural gas as a key
Plastics are universal and integrated into different sectors of the economy. Industrial policy requires countries to look at moving up the value chain and producing progressively more sophisticated products to contribute to improved economic development. The input materials that are used for...
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– How can natural resources support inclusive growth in Africa
For a growing number of countries in Africa the discovery of natural resources is a great opportunity, but one accompanied by considerable risks. There is an extensive literature linking natural resource dependence to poor economic performance. One cause is that resource-abundant economies tend to...
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– What are the challenges?
Diversifying the agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa is important for the combat against poverty and climate change. In Malawi there are plans for legalizing the cultivation of industrial hemp, which would at best bring possibilities for Malawi and South Africa to complement each other in...
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– The challenge for Africa
Why is there so little industry in Africa? Does it matter? What can be done about it? These were questions I put to Finn Tarp and Louis Kasekende, then the Director of UNU-WIDER and Chief Economist of the African Development Bank respectively, at a 2008 meeting of the African Economic Research...
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– The case of Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia
Much discussion of climate change in the developing world focuses on if, when, and to what extent developing countries should be subject to any global attempts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Little work has been done on the likely economic impacts resulting from the interplay of climate change...
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At the beginning of this decade, large offshore natural gas fields were discovered in north-east Mozambique. Investment is now flowing into the country, and a boom in the natural gas sector is expected. According to estimates from Mozambique’s Ministry of Economy and Finance, additional tax revenues...
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At the beginning of this decade, large offshore natural gas fields were discovered in north-east Mozambique. Investment is now flowing into the country, and a boom in the natural gas sector is expected. According to estimates from Mozambique’s Ministry of Economy and Finance, additional tax revenues...
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At the beginning of this decade, large offshore natural gas fields were discovered in north-east Mozambique. Investment is now flowing into the country, and a boom in the natural gas sector is expected. According to estimates from Mozambique’s Ministry of Economy and Finance, additional tax revenues...
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– UNU-WIDER provides open access to a wealth of information
The question ‘why is there so little industrialization in Africa?’ has been a key focus of UNU-WIDER researchers and research partners for the last decade. Many Asian economies started their industrialization processes from conditions similar to those that African countries are experiencing today...
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– New gas finds, investments, and their implications in Mozambique
Large flows of foreign investments have not been translated into a boom for the Mozambican economy. On the contrary, they have foreshadowed a sustained period of deep economic difficulty for the country. What is the story behind this phenomenon and what are its implications? Mozambique has been...
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– Will local content do the trick?
Extractives and interlinked industries are expecting a boom in Mozambique. This could be good news for the country’s economy, in theory. But can extractives really work as a driver to diversify the Mozambican economy? It is unlikely that the extractives sector can any time soon be used to finance...
Blog
– What can be done?
In the second part of this blog, Alan R. Roe discusses what is known about the informational failures that pose challenges for governments in projecting revenues from extractive industries. Read the first part here. Important new light has been thrown on information gaps faced by governments in...
Blog
– Information asymmetries and other disadvantages of host governments
In the first part of this blog, Alan R. Roe writes about the difficulties governments face in predicting revenues from extractive industries. Read part two here. Countries endowed with rich mineral or oil and gas resources have many competing uses for the revenues that arise from the production of...
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Over the past decade significant hydrocarbon discoveries have been made across East Africa. Unsurprisingly, the respective governments countries have been excited about these discoveries, expecting revenue and local economic opportunities to follow suit. However, concerns about the macroeconomic...
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Climate change is one of the most complex and urgent of global issues due to its potential impacts and the policies and measures needed to address those impacts. Both are potential game changers for the Earth’s biosphere, ways of life, and economic development into the twenty-first century and...
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– How inflated expectations of oil revenues led to a deterioration in macroeconomic management
Prior to the discovery of oil, Ghana was one of the stars of the ‘Africa rising’ story, with an established track record of macroeconomic stability and fiscal discipline. When oil was discovered, there were great hopes that Ghana would avoid the ‘resource curse’. Initial signs were promising — the...
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– Success and failure in the extractive sector
A central difficulty for extractive activity is that benefits accrue at the national level but disruptions are highly localized. Companies recognise that these imbalances need to be addressed and adopt active programmes to improve local benefits. These programmes have had mixed past success, partly...
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– The last 25 years
Ever since the British Industrial Revolution, energy has been a key factor of production. Recent history has proved no exception. The pattern of primary commercial energy consumption since 1965 is presented in Figure 1. What is also clear is that, since the start of this century, energy consumption...
Blog
The recent anti-corruption summit in London highlighted a much-publicized issue in development—transparency is crucial in the minerals sector. However, an event at UNU-WIDER made it clear that this is only one of many key issues related to the extractive industries, government revenues, and...
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I spent the last couple of days at a fascinating workshop at UNU-WIDER on the role of extractive industries in development. Tony Addison, UNU-WIDER Chief Economist-Deputy Director, and Alan Roe, UNU-WIDER Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow and Oxford Policy Management Associate are pulling together...
Blog
The white-painted cluster of traditional style buildings might suggest that this was a farm on the South African veldt. Not so however—it was Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS) Annual Forum held on 14-15 July 2015 at the University of Witwatersrand, a high-level gathering of economists...
Blog
26 March 2014 Tony Addison The Nordic countries have a long-standing commitment to development, and their work in peace-building has taken Nordic peacemakers into some of the toughest places in the world. The Nordic countries have been firm supporters of the United Nations system, when other...
Research Brief
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Forest degradation remains a leading environmental problem, given the scale of forest loss and the crucial role of forests to both climate change mitigation and adaptation. Initiatives from the climate change policy arena, especially REDD+, are opening new ways for a broader mainstreaming of forest...
Blog
22 August 2013 Roger Williamson Given the high growth rates since 2000 and low labour costs, Africa could develop manufacturing industry, agro-processing, and services. But these cost advantages can easily be undermined by factors such as inadequate infrastructure, particularly power, transportation...
Blog
– An Interview with Wisdom Akpalu
29 August 2013 Carl-Gustav Lindén Since 1997 the University of Gothenburg, Sweden has been running a unique PhD programme on environmental and development economics with a large participation of graduate students from developing countries. This long-term capacity-building programme has been financed...
Blog
– The Real Price of Green Energy
4 July 2013 Carl-Gustav Lindén In recent years the price of green energy technology has come down dramatically. This means that European investments in renewable energy can be very competitive. But in developing countries this price drop is not enough, as the cost of capital is so much higher than...
Research Brief
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All climate scenarios considered result in reduced national welfare, if no reforms are enacted. If no policy changes are implemented, the present value of climate change costs up to 2050 are between US2 and US7 billion, for the scenarios considered in Mozambique. Climate change damages, while being...
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