NATIONAL STRATEGIES AND PUBLIC INVESTMENT
Public investment has potential to reduce both economic inefficiencies caused by market failures and inequality in the distribution of goods and services related to differences in access to resources across different groups and individuals. It is thus not surprising that African leaders have signed onto various charters that require allocation of substantial shares of their national budgets to different sectors or outcomes. These include the Maputo Declaration commitment to allocate 10 percent of national budgets to the agriculture sector, the Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Other Related Infectious Diseases commitment to allocate 15 percent of national budgets to the health sector, and the Addis Ababa Declaration on Science Technology and Scientific Research for Development, with 1 percent of GDP allocated to science and technology. How can African leaders make significant shifts in expenditures across different sectors to meet these targets, knowing that increasing the share of the budget to one sector, such as agriculture, implies decreasing the share to other sectors, with possible adverse implications for overall development outcomes?
Addressing this dilemma is central to the design of national strategies and raises important research questions related to budget allocation processes within the zero-sum game of national budgets as well as issues of substitutability, complementarity, and interdependence among different types of public investment. Issues of debt management and fiscal policy also come into play as many African governments are now borrowing at unprecedented rates (relative to GDP) to finance various recurrent budget items and infrastructure development. Because different types of investments are needed for addressing different challenges and have different effects on development outcomes, it is essential to identify the “right” amounts, composition, and sequencing of investments at both national and subnational levels.
Research topics under this strategic area include:
- Identifying and understanding the political economy and other factors that affect budget allocations and different types of investment at national and subnational levels.
- Analyzing substitution, complementarity, and sequencing effects of different investments on multiple outcomes and food systems transformation in different contexts.
- Identifying investment options to inform design of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) national agricultural investment plans (NAIPs) and accelerate food systems transformation in different countries.
Related Projects
2. Supporting ReSAKSS and CAADP
3. Strengthening CAADP Biennial Review (BR)
4. National Agriculture Investment Plan (NAIP)
5. Ceres2030: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger
6. COVID-19: Measuring Impacts and Prioritizing Policies for Recovery
