Africa has robust growth, and the region’s economic prospects remain good. GDP per capita has expanded at 2.4 percent per year, good for an average increase in GDP per capita of 50 percent since 1996.

But the averages also hide a substantial degree of variation. For example, GDP per capita in resource-rich countries grew 2.2 times faster during 1996-2011 than in resource-poor countries.

Despite the better growth performance, poverty declined substantially less in resource-rich countries. Fast growth has also been recorded in resource-poor countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia and Mozambique.

Most importantly, the youth bulge will need to be absorbed in productive jobs. Migration out of agriculture into the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns appears more conducive to faster poverty reduction.

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Does organizing groups of rural women producers contribute to empowerment as well as increasing their incomes? Yes, it can be a step towards increased empowerment under the right conditions.

Women rarely have equal say in or leadership of mixed groups, while women-only groups may face challenges with business viability. Empowerment was greater when women participate in informal as well as formal groups.

Learning from experience, development actors need to adopt flexible approaches to supporting collective action, taking the wider context into account, and supporting women’s own initiatives.

We also need to pay more attention to the policy environment, setting explicit targets to address women’s participation and leadership, and protecting the space for informal association.

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Land is a big deal for Oxfam. Last year we published Risky Business, looking at the explosion in channelling development finance to private sector businesses via Financial Intermediaries.

We worried that such poorly governed financing was fuelling land grabs and involved some worrying characteristics – opacity, complexity, and focus on financial returns over development impact.

Since then a lot has happened. Oxfam has been asking the World Bank to freeze its large agriculture investments until it puts in place measures to tackle the threat of land grabs.

Looks like we have two very different World Banks on land grabs. So who do we believe, Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde? In terms of hard cash, the IFC increasingly dominates.

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Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease are perhaps the best known novels not only to emerge from Africa but the entire world. The author of these classic works which embodied a clear anti-colonial theme, Chinua Achebe, passed away on March 21 in Boston.

Achebe will be remembered for his literary contributions and his fierce criticism of colonial and post-colonial African society. His books will remain a mainstay of libraries and classrooms for many generations to come.

Nigeria today has still not overcome the legacy of imperialism. Despite its vast oil wealth, there is profound inequality within the country. In order for real development to occur in Nigeria, there must be a break with the imperialist and neo-colonialist economic and political models.

There has to be a national program for the reconstruction of the country based upon the interests of the workers, farmers and youth of the country and this effort must be linked with the broader struggle throughout Africa and the world.

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If protecting human rights could be translated into a single political action, the creation of comprehensive social protection schemes would be it. Yet many of the world’s poorer states have not adopted anything like a comprehensive social safety net.

States can no longer claim to believe in human rights protection while failing to invest in social protection, for the two are intimately linked. There are many ways and means of funding a decent social safety net – now we need the political will.

One obvious problem with the global proposal is the lack of discussion on how it could be funded. You would probably need to put together all the proposals for international taxation to pull it off.

What kind of political coalition is going to do that? Politically, doing an Alaska at national level looks a lot more realistic.

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Regional integration in Africa has long featured as a potential solution for the manifold problems inherited from the fragmentation of the imperialist scramble.

A lesson from many efforts is that politically inspired schemes fail, while schemes with limited and specific functions may work. The AU and many regional schemes with economic objectives are examples.

The issue addresses in this book is far more ambitious than simple functional integration. The objective is regional integration within a democratic system of government that recognises ethnic and cultural diversity and guarantees equal citizenship rights for all.

This is a praiseworthy collective effort to advance the debate on a topic that is much discussed but little analysed. The authors point to the immense social change that needs to take place before lasting integration can take place in the Horn.

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The analytical and constructive article (below) by Graciana del Castillo suggests how to promote economic development that contributes to building peace in conflict-affected countries such as Liberia.

It rightly emphasises the urgency of promoting inclusive growth in Liberia by developing the domestic economy, strengthening its linkages with the export-oriented enclave economy and increasing the social contributions of the latter.

However, the Reconstruction Zones (RZs) proposal is not entirely convincing; both its rationale and feasibility have to be explained in the specific Liberian political economy context.

The inclusive market development approach may provide avenues for both sustainable structural change and for short-term results building on ongoing activities by private market actors.

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The experience and lessons of the last two decades have shown that ignoring the key differences between the economics of peace and the economics of development has been a major reason why countries relapse into conflict.

This article briefly analyses such differences and their important implications for effective policymaking in war-torn countries, and against this background, it makes recommendations for the creation of reconstruction zones (RZ) in Liberia.

Reconstruction zones would have two distinct but linked areas to ensure synergies between them—an export-oriented reconstruction zone and a local production reconstruction zone.

The export RZ would consist of any existing agricultural or mining foreign concession. The local RZ would focus on rural development and produce agricultural goods, food, light manufacturing and services for the domestic market, including for the concessions.

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Many agriculture and rural development projects in Africa aim to enhance food security for the most resource-poor, especially women-headed households and children.

Yet these primarily large- and medium-scale agricultural investments marginalize smallholder farmers, mostly women. This approach intensifies gender inequalities and food insecurity in countries like Zambia.

This article assesses the extent to which two leading development banks’ agriculture investments in Zambia address gender inequality and reduce malnutrition. The banks fail to guarantee women’s access to project activities and benefits or measure projects’ varied gender impacts.

The article concludes with recommendations for making agriculture and rural development investments responsive to women’s needs and concerns, and thus more effective.

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The re-emergence of China as a world power with its increasing influence in many regions of the world has led to controversy. Chinese loans, China’s relationship with the ruling party, and illegal mining have become important issues in Ghana’s upcoming election.

In Ghana, arguably Africa’s most democratic nation, presidential elections are often very tight. China has become an important talking point in the ongoing hotly-contested presidential election campaign, with voting scheduled for December 7 .

The most heated issue involving China is illegal mining, with opposition politicians continually interrogating the sitting NDC government on the issue.

There is a perception that those who are supposed to be protecting the wellbeing of local Ghanaians cannot resist bribes from the Chinese, thus allowing illegal companies to practice surface mining at the expense of powerless villagers.

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