Africa Recovery Briefing Paper PDF Download

According to Afrobarometer onvention, a change in public opinion is imputed only if we observe a shift in results of at least 10 ercentage-points on the same item from one survey to the next.1 The thrust of our findings is that unemployment - which has reached crisis proportions in Africa negatively colors the general public's view of government performance. [...] While part of this shift may be a methodological anomaly,3 we infer that the general economic mood has brightened slightly of late as a reflection of improvements in GDP growth rates in some African countries in the late 1990s. [...] From a low base, a doubling was recorded in South Africa, in concert with the country's recovery from the "Asian flu" of the late 1990s and the strengthening of the price of gold in the early 2000s. [...] Second, whereas the W Figure 7: Most Important Economic Problems: lack of jobs was cited as the s most important problem in less than half (5 out of 11) of all countri thirds (10 out of 15) of all countries hat are the most important problems facing the country that the government 17 17 8 5 6 10 6 8 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 Unemployment Management of the Economy Poverty/Destitution Food Security R. [...] The Effects of Unemployment By way of conclusion, we demonstrate that unemployment remains a major obstacle to a more fulsome popular embrace of the government's performance in the management of economic reform (See Table 14).