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Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in Sub-Saharan Africa can be defined as mutual assistance organizations through which individuals undertake collective action in order to improve their own lives. “Collective action” implies that individuals share their time, labor, money, or other assets with the group. In a recent EPAR data analysis, we use three nationally-representative survey tools to examine various indicators related to the coverage and prevalence of Self-Help Group usage across six Sub-Saharan African countries. EPAR has developed Stata .do files for the construction of a set of self-help group indicators using data from the Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), Financial Inclusion Index (FII), and FinScope.
We compiled a set of summary statistics for the final indicators using data from the following survey instruments:
- Ethiopia:
- Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS), Wave 3 (2015-16)
- Kenya:
- Kenya FinScope, Wave 4 (2015)
- Kenya FII, Wave 4 (2016)
- Nigeria
- Nigeria FII, Wave 4 (2016)
- Rwanda:
- Rwanda FII, Wave 4 (2016)
- Tanzania:
- Tanzania National Panel Survey (TNPS), Wave 4 (2014-15)
- Tanzania FinScope, Wave 4 (2017)
- Tanzania FII, Wave 4 (2016)
- Uganda:
- Uganda FinScope, Wave 3 (2013)
- Uganda FII, Wave 4 (2016)
The raw survey data files are available for download free of charge from the World Bank LSMS-ISA website, the Financial Sector Deepening Trust website, and the Financial Inclusion Insights website. The .do files process the data and create final data sets at the household (LSMS-ISA) and individual (FII, FinScope) levels with labeled variables, which can be used to estimate summary statistics for the indicators.
All the instruments include nationally-representative samples. All estimates from the LSMS-ISA are household-level cluster-weighted means, while all estimates from FII and FinScope are calculated as individual-level weighted means. The proportions in the Indicators Spreadsheet are therefore estimates of the true proportion of individuals/households in the national population during the year of the survey. EPAR also created a Tableau visualization of these summary statistics, which can be found here.
We have also prepared a document outlining the construction decisions for each indicator across survey instruments and countries. We attempted to follow the same construction approach across instruments, and note any situations where differences in the instruments made this impossible.
The spreadsheet includes estimates of the following indicators created in our code files:
Sub-Populations
- Proportion of individuals who have access to a mobile phone
- Proportion of individuals who have official identification
- Proportion of individuals who are female
- Proportion of individuals who use mobile money
- Proportion of individuals who have a bank account
- Proportion of individuals who live in a rural area
- Individual Poverty Status
- Two Lowest PPI Quintiles
- Middle PPI Quintile
- Two Highest PPI Quintiles
Coverage & Prevalence
- Proportion of individuals who have interacted with a SHG
- Proportion of individuals who have used an SHG for financial services
- Proportion of individuals who depend most on SHGs for financial advice
- Proportion of individuals who have received financial advice from a SHG
- Proportion of households that have interacted with a SHG
- Proportion of households in communities with at least one SHG
- Proportion of households in communities with access to multiple farmer cooperative groups
- Proportion of households who have used an SHG for financial services
Characteristics
In addition, we produced estimates for 29 indicators related to characteristics of SHG use including indicators related to frequency of SHG use, characteristics of SHG groups, and individual/household trust of SHGs.
In this brief, we report on measures of economic growth, poverty and agricultural activity in Ethiopia. For each category of measure, we first describe different measurement approaches and present available time series data on selected indicators. We then use data from the sources listed below to discuss associations within and between these categories between 1994 and 2017.
Donor countries and multilateral organizations may pursue multiple goals with foreign aid, including supporting low-income country development for strategic/security purposes (national security, regional political stability) and for short-and long-term economic interests (market development and access, local and regional market stability). While the literature on the effectiveness of aid in supporting progress on different indicators of country development is inconclusive, donors are interested in evidence that aid funding is not permanent but rather contributes to a process by which recipient countries develop to a point that they are economically self-sufficient. In this report, we review the literature on measures of country self-sufficiency and descriptive evidence from illustrative case studies to explore conditions associated with transitions toward self-sufficiency in certain contexts.
Common aid allocation formulas incorporate measures of income per capita but not measures of poverty, likely based on the assumption that rising average incomes are associated with reduced poverty. If declining poverty is the outcome of interest, however, the case of Nigeria illustrates that such aid allocation formulas could lead to poorly targeted or inefficient aid disbursements. Using data from the World Bank and the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics, we find that while the relationship between economic growth and poverty in Nigeria varies depending on the time period studied, overall from 1992-2009 Nigeria’s poverty rate has only declined by 6% despite a 70% increase in per capita gross domestic product (GDP). A review of the literature indicates that income inequality, the prominence of the oil sector, unemployment, corruption, and poor education and health in Nigeria may help to explain the pattern of high ongoing poverty rates in the country even in the presence of economic growth. Our analysis is limited by substantial gaps in the availability of quality data on measures of poverty and economic growth in Nigeria, an issue also raised in the literature we reviewed, but our findings support arguments that economic growth should not be assumed to lead to poverty reduction and that the relationship between these outcomes likely depends on contextual factors.
We review the status and characteristics of 48 national identity programs and initiatives in 43 developing countries, and evaluate how these programs are being connected to—or used for—service provision. The identity programs we review are mainly government-issued national IDs. However, we also review other types of national identity programs with links to various services including voter cards, passports, and two programs targeting the poor and the banking population. Following a brief review of the roles of identity systems in development and recent identity system trends, we present an overview of the 48 national identity programs, including technical features (such as whether physical identities incorporate an electronic component or are embedded with biometric features), implementation status, population enrollment strategies, and coverage. We next review evidence of implementation challenges around accountability, privacy, data management, enrollment, coverage, cost, and harmonization of identity programs. Finally, we present the functional applications of national identity programs, reporting how these programs are linked with services in finance, health, agriculture, elections, and other areas, and analyzing whether particular identity program characteristics are associated with functional applications.
EPAR’s Political Economy of Fertilizer Policy series provides a history of government intervention in the fertilizer markets of eight Sub-Saharan African countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania. The briefs focus on details of present and past voucher programs, input subsidies, tariffs in the fertilizer sector, and the political context of these policies. The briefs illustrate these policies’ effect on key domestic crops and focus on the strengths and weaknesses of current market structure. Fertilizer policy in SSA has been extremely dynamic over the last fifty years, swinging from enormous levels of intervention in the 1960s and 70s to liberalization of markets of the 1980s and 1990s. More recently, intervention has become more moderate, focusing on “market smart” subsidies and support. This executive summary highlights key findings and common themes from the series.
In the decades following independence in 1960, Côte d’Ivoire stood out as a shining example of economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. GDP increased at an annual average of 8.1 percent from 1960 to 1979, led largely by cocoa and coffee exports. Low export earnings from a fall in world cocoa prices and a heavy public debt burden halted this growth in the 1980s, followed by civil conflict beginning in 1999. Three decades of focus on export crops rather than food crops also left Côte d’Ivoire with a growing food deficit. This literature review examines the state of agriculture in Côte d’Ivoire and the history of government involvement in the agricultural sector. We find that while the country is poised to reemerge from a decade of economic stagnation and civil war after signing the Ouagadougou Political Accord in 2007, the political economy of Côte d’Ivoire is still heavily dependent upon and influenced by the production of cocoa. Cocoa is the top export, and cocoa export taxes provide one of the largest sources of revenue for the Government of Côte d’Ivoire (GoCI). Cocoa is not heavily dependent on fertilizer inputs and growers have increased production by expanding cropland. The small contribution of fertilizer to the production of this essential crop may help explain the GoCI’s low priority on expanding fertilizer production and use. Given that a large part of government revenue comes from the export of cocoa and coffee, the government has chosen to focus resources on crops that increase revenue. Even with the food riots in 2008, the GoCI has not made increasing domestic food production an important focus of agricultural policy.