Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) 2022 Annual Meeting
The Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) brings together faculty and advanced graduate students in Economics and Political Science who combine field research experience in Africa with training in political economy methods. The group has met semi-annually to discuss the in-progress work of its core members and invited guests since 2002. It is co-led by Daniel Posner (UCLA), Amanda Robinson (Ohio State University), and Amma Panin (University of Louvain), and hosted by the Center for Effective Global Action at UC Berkeley. WGAPE is generously funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. This annual meeting was held in-person at the University of Rwanda from June 27-28, 2022.
Program and Selected Papers
This year’s paper presenters and full agenda can be found here.
The following papers were selected for discussion at WGAPE. Authors present at the meeting are listed in bold.
Isaac Ahimbisibwe: “Co-ethnic Peers in Higher Education in Uganda”
Aimable Nsabimana & Jules Ngango: “Institutional reform and child nutrition in Rwanda: Evidence from NCDA”
Joan Ricart-Huguet (Co-Authors: Jack Paine and Xiaoyan Qiu): “Endogenous Colonial Borders: Precolonial States and Geography in the Partition of Africa”
Matthew K. Ribar: “Who wins land disputes?”
Jubril Animashaun (Co-Author: Lotanna E. Emediegwu): “Is There a Subnational Resource Curse? Evidence from Households in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria”
Paula Gonzalez (Co-Authors: Sreelakshmi Papineni, Markus Goldstein, Jed Friedman): “Cash Is Queen: Local Economy Growth Effects of Unconditional Cash Transfers to Women in West Africa”
Razan Amine (Co-Authors: Fabrizio Santoro and Tanele Magongo): “Mandating Digital Tax Tools as a Response to Covid: Evidence from Eswatini”
Efobi Uchenna (Co-Author: Adejumo Oluwabunmi): “‘Shades of Gray’: The Impact of Pastoralists Violent Conflict Frames on Citizen’s Political Attitudes”
Victor Agboga: “Where do your loyalties lie? Party Switching and Voters’ Response in Nigeria”
Meeting Information
WGAPE meetings center on research discussion sessions rather than presentations. Papers and research design submissions reflected WGAPE’s broad research agenda on the political economy of African development, including ethnic politics, civil conflict and violence, decentralization and democratization, corruption, local governance, public economics, and other related topics. Papers were circulated and read in advance by all participants. Presenters provided brief, orienting comments before the floor was opened for an hour-long discussion of each paper.
Additionally, this meeting included 2 “speed networking” sessions where attendees were matched with other conference participants to discuss research interests. This meeting was also unique in that it featured a walking tour of Kigali with the Nyamirambo Women’s Center.
WGAPE Participants on the Nyamirambo Women’s Center walking tour.