Week in Review

Hello everyone and welcome on board for this week in review. Among other highlights, we have:

• Impact of the Internet in Africa: Establishing conditions for success and catalyzing inclusive growth in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and Nigeria, by the Dalberg Group in coordination with Google. It intends to help policymakers capture the potential of the Internet for social and economic development—to help them understand how their societies already use the Internet, where the opportunities lie, what future potential for social impact the Internet offers, and what their countries need to get there.

• Africa Monitoring System Initiative, a joint initiative of Conservation International (CI), the Council for Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa, the Earth Institute (EI), Columbia University. It aims to track, monitor and diagnose agricultural productivity, ecosystem health, and human well-being in African landscapes with near real-time data to better understand the opportunities and trade-offs of increased agricultural production.

• Gouvernance, croissance économique et lutte contre la pauvreté: liens et éléments de politiques by Abdeslam Nada of the Haut-Commissariat au Plan (Morocco), analyzes the links between good governance and poverty rates. Using a quantitative methodology, the author demonstrates that good governance is positively correlated with a high economic growth and a reduced poverty rate. The author also recommends several social investment policies (on education, health and jobs) and a better monitoring-evaluation framework to increase the effectiveness of these policies in reducing the number of people below the poverty line.

• Infographic: Africa from Top to Bottom, by Master of Finance Degrees and Think Africa Press, goes beyond the GDP in measuring the performance of African countries. This is achieved in part by using dozens of different indicators for each of the ranking's four main pillars – law and safety, economic opportunity, human development, and human rights. Mauritius, Cape Verde, Botswana, Seychelles and South Africa form the top 5 of this ranking.

• Wikichild’s online discussion on “How child well-being should be measured in view of future development frameworks?” ended this week. Diverse themes such as health, safety, education, resilience have been put forward by the participants. We thank you forward for the 51 interesting comments and look forward for more discussion on pressing issues. This blog post by Melinda George, the new Wikichild coordinator, gives an interesting overview of the discussion.

We hope to see you next week for more progress-themed articles. Wikiprogress focus for July and August will be “Networks”.

Stay tuned by following us on Twitter (@wp_africa) and on Facebook (here).

Ousmane Aly DIALLO
Wikiprogress Africa Coordinator