For ten years, the Afrobarometer has undertaken a comparative series of national public opinion surveys that measure public attitudes toward democracy, governance, the economy and market reform, leadership, identity and other issues in Africa. From its inception, the Afrobarometer project has worked with a network of partners, based in Africa and the United States, to generate scientifically reliable data on public opinion in Africa while at the same time aiming to strengthen institutional capacity for survey research in Africa. Additionally, the Afrobarometer has also sought to widely disseminate and apply its results to various stakeholders, including those based in Africa and outside of the continent. This presentation will offer an overview of the Afrobarometer project in the preceding ten years, identifying some of the key achievements made in realizing its objectives as well as some of the challenges encountered in carrying out survey research in Africa.
The Afrobarometer has developed an experiential measure of lived poverty (how frequently people go without basic necessities during the course of a year) that measures a portion of the central core of the concept of poverty not captured by existing objective or subjective measures. Empirically, the measure has strong individual level construct validity and reliability within any cross national round of surveys. Yet it also displays inconsistent levels of external validity as a measure of aggregate level poverty when compared to other objective, material measures of poverty or well being. Surprisingly, however, we find that lived poverty is very strongly related to country level measures of political freedom. This finding simultaneously supports Sen's (1999) arguments about development as freedom, corroborates Halperin et al's (2005) arguments about the "democracy advantage" in development, and increases our confidence that we are indeed measuring the experiential core of poverty.
Despite the important role that women generally play in development processes, they are disproportionally underrepresented in politics and leadership positions compared to men, as exemplified in the case of Nigeria. Using the Afrobarometer data of 2015, this study seeks to examine the socio-economic factors that predict women's political participation in Nigeria. The study shows that education, religion, place of residence, party affiliation, and geo-political zone predict political participation. Based on the beta values generated from the multivariate linear regression analysis, post-secondary education, South-Eastern geo-political zone, and party affiliation are the most significant predictors of women's political participation. The study particularly points to the impact of education, and the encouragement of women to become affiliated with political parties to make more influence in the Nigerian polity.
In this thesis I examine the causal linkages between natural resource scarcity and violence. In contrast to previous research, I posit that scarcity is an inherently personal experience, and thus argue that the consequences of scarcity too, should be empirically tested at the individual level. The available literature has heavily relied on macro- level aggregate data, often producing inconclusive findings on the exact causality between scarcity and violence. Based on the theoretical work by Thomas Homer- Dixon, I apply micro- level household survey data in a multi- stage structural equation model to test the effect of people's social and political perceptions and attitudes on the linkage between scarcity and violence. I find both direct and indirect significant linkages between respondents' experienced scarcity ('lived scarcity') and their propensity to use violence. I find that the indirect effect on violence is explained by decreases in policy satisfaction, political trust and state legitimacy, and increases of more positive attitudes towards violence. From this, I suggest that experienced scarcity is 'politicized' by respondents as a policy failure, rather than being perceived as exogenous to the political system. My analysis supports the relevance of conditional meso- level factors, and finds strong differences between moderator groups regarding their propensity to use violence. While I find that the highest levels of use of violence in Kenya are driven by political competition, rather than ethnic competition, my path models clearly demonstrate that experienced food scarcity is a significant root cause of this violence through its effect on how people 'politicize' the experience of scarcity. Overall, the models suggest that the effects of scarcity are more complex than previously acknowledged. The risk of violence should thus not be estimated only through direct effects between scarcity and violence, but the risk should be understood in terms of both immediate, direct effects, and mid- and long- term, indirect effects such as decreased levels of political trust, lower perceptions of state legitimacy and more accepting attitudes towards violence.
In this paper, we examine the microeconomic determinants of the perception of corruption in twelve Sub-Saharan African countries. Unlike the indicators of corruption based on the opinion of international experts, the study focuses on corrupt practices as experienced by the African people themselves. The results of our estimates, using an ordered probit indicate that the individual characteristics such as age and sex significantly affect the perception people have of corruption as do social and political factors like access to information (press, media, radio). However, neither democracy nor participation in demonstrations, seem to affect the attitude of individuals towards corruption.
In this paper, we examine the microeconomic determinants of the perception of corruption in twelve Sub-Saharan African countries. Unlike the indicators of corruption based on the opinion of international experts, the study focuses on corrupt practices as experienced by the African people themselves. The results of our estimates, using an ordered probit indicate that the individual characteristics such as age and sex significantly affect the perception people have of corruption as do social and political factors like access to information (press, media, radio). However, neither democracy nor participation in demonstrations, seem to affect the attitude of individuals towards corruption.
We used five waves of the Afrobarometer survey data to examine gender differences in political participation in the selected sub-Saharan Africa countries. The results showed that while the odds of voting have actually declined slightly over the time covered by the surveys, overall women were only about two-thirds as likely to vote as men with the gender gap in voting varying widely across countries and time. Also, the gender gap was narrowing by about 3.7% per survey round, with people in rural areas, more educated people, older people, employed people, people who belonged to a religious group, and people who expressed more interest in public affairs being more likely to vote. With regard to collective action, although it was increasing, the gender gap in collective action remained constant. In most regards, with its effects paralleling those for voting in that collective action was higher in rural areas, among older people, more educated people, people who were more interested in public affairs, poor people and members of religious groups. Results imply that civic education and other mechanisms are needed to encourage more female participation in all aspects of the political process. ; http://reference.sabinet.co.za/webx/access/electronic_journals/genbeh/genbeh_v12_n3_a8.pdf ; http://reference.sabinet.co.za/document/EJC154466
This study explores the nature of Mozambicans' commitment to democracy by testing and examining cognitive and performance evaluation factors, using Round 2 of the Afrobarometer survey. It finds that Mozambicans are less committed to democracy than many other Africans but their levels of procedural understanding of democracy are higher. My main findings are as follows: First, levels of information are the main source of popular commitment to democracy. Second, both evaluations of economic and political performance matter for Mozambicans' commitment to democracy. Third, the effects of political performance matter more than economics. Fourth, people who have high levels of information (from news media use and formal education), discuss politics with friends or neighbors and obtain their information from relatively more independent sources (such as participation in collective action and contacting religious leaders) are more likely to be committed democrats. Fifth, procedural understandings of democracy are positively relevant for individual commitment to democracy.
We used five waves of the Afrobarometer survey data to examine gender differences in political participation in the selected sub-Saharan Africa countries. The results showed that while the odds of voting have actually declined slightly over the time covered by the surveys, overall women were only about two-thirds as likely to vote as men with the gender gap in voting varying widely across countries and time. Also, the gender gap was narrowing by about 3.7% per survey round, with people in rural areas, more educated people, older people, employed people, people who belonged to a religious group, and people who expressed more interest in public affairs being more likely to vote. With regard to collective action, although it was increasing, the gender gap in collective action remained constant. In most regards, with its effects paralleling those for voting in that collective action was higher in rural areas, among older people, more educated people, people who were more interested in public affairs, poor people and members of religious groups. Results imply that civic education and other mechanisms are needed to encourage more female participation in all aspects of the political process.
We used five waves of the Afrobarometer survey data to examine gender differences in political participation in the selected sub-Saharan Africa countries. The results showed that while the odds of voting have actually declined slightly over the time covered by the surveys, overall women were only about two-thirds as likely to vote as men with the gender gap in voting varying widely across countries and time. Also, the gender gap was narrowing by about 3.7% per survey round, with people in rural areas, more educated people, older people, employed people, people who belonged to a religious group, and people who expressed more interest in public affairs being more likely to vote. With regard to collective action, although it was increasing, the gender gap in collective action remained constant. In most regards, with its effects paralleling those for voting in that collective action was higher in rural areas, among older people, more educated people, people who were more interested in public affairs, poor people and members of religious groups. Results imply that civic education and other mechanisms are needed to encourage more female participation in all aspects of the political process.
We used five waves of the Afrobarometer survey data to examine gender differences in political participation in the selected sub-Saharan Africa countries. The results showed that while the odds of voting have actually declined slightly over the time covered by the surveys, overall women were only about two-thirds as likely to vote as men with the gender gap in voting varying widely across countries and time. Also, the gender gap was narrowing by about 3.7% per survey round, with people in rural areas, more educated people, older people, employed people, people who belonged to a religious group, and people who expressed more interest in public affairs being more likely to vote. With regard to collective action, although it was increasing, the gender gap in collective action remained constant. In most regards, with its effects paralleling those for voting in that collective action was higher in rural areas, among older people, more educated people, people who were more interested in public affairs, poor people and members of religious groups. Results imply that civic education and other mechanisms are needed to encourage more female participation in all aspects of the political process.
We examine the relationship between road quality and regional favouritism in Sub-Saharan Africa. Roads are an important public good in Africa, not only because of their positive impact on economic development but also because they are a major focus of central government spending. Using data from up to twelve countries from rounds 3 through 6 of the Afrobarometer on the existence of paved roads and regional, round, and country/round fixed effects, we find a negative effect of having a co-regional president, such that co-regional presidents provide poorer quality roads to their home areas than to other parts of the country. This result exists at both the highest (provincial) and second-highest (district) level of local government, and is robust to a variety of controls and sub-samples. We examine qualitative evidence from three countries which suggests that Presidents channel regional favouritism towards their co-ethnic/co-regional elite at the expense of the non-elite.
The arguments that property rights and taxation positively affect development are well established in separate literatures, but the link between property rights and taxation is understudied. To address this gap, we theorize that formalization of individual property rights facilitates economic exchange at scale, providing a viable opportunity for individuals to improve their economic standing, in exchange for which property owners assent to pay taxes. We illustrate the argument by comparing the historical evolution of tax states in early modern Europe and colonial Africa. Empirically, we examine the links in sub-Saharan Africa between (1) the ease of access to state-recorded information on land ownership and assent to paying taxes using individual-level data from Afrobarometer, and (2) the formalization of individual property rights on land, measured through novel data on the extent of cadastral records, and government revenue from taxes on individuals at the cross-country level.
Wouters et al. (2010) critiqued the prospects of success for South Africa's new National Strategic Plan (NSP) for HIV/AIDS; they stressed the need to mobilize people living with HIV/AIDS and their communities in order to implement the comprehensive HIV/AIDS strategy. Utilizing the South African sample from the Fourth Round of the Afrobarometer survey, this paper identifies the factors which predicted respondent selection of HIV/AIDS as an important issue for the government to address. The identification of HIV/AIDS as an important governmental problem became the study's dependent variable. Other possible important factors were whether respondents had personal knowledge of HIV/AIDS, meaning they knew someone who died of AIDS, poverty, and their assessments of the way the government was handling the HIV/AIDS crisis. Respondent background and demographic characteristics were also included in a logistic regression analysis. The results identified three factors that predicted respondent choice of HIV/AIDS: race, especially being a Black South African, the choice of health as a governmental priority, and the rural-urban dimension. The conclusion was that HIV/AIDS, as opposed to health, should be the focus of campaigns designed to mobilize public support of comprehensive HIV/AIDS strategies in South Africa.
Although economic and political ties between China and Africa have grown significantly in recent years, resulting in numerous studies on the possible implications of these deepening ties, relatively few studies have focused on public perceptions of these increasingly cozy China-Africa ties (Gadzala and Hanusch, 2010). The increased involvement of China in Africa has been one of the most controversial geopolitical developments on the continent in recent years (Wasserman, 2013, p. 1). According to a 2010 Afrobarometer report, there are limited "systematic analyses of African perceptions on the rapidly growing China-Africa links and their underlying determinants." Audience surveys mapping CCTV Africa's reception across the continent are not publicly available (Gagliardone, 2013, p. 10). It is observed in the Afrobarometer report that "as China deepens its cooperation with Africa, it is essential to critically observe African perceptions of its increasingly important partner." This chapter therefore seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate on perceptions of China-Africa relations from the perspective of journalists and the public as audience in Kenya.
