Introduction

Welcome to the Africa Research Program at Harvard University. The Program, focusing on the political economy of sub-Saharan Africa, has a research component and an information component. In our research, we are studying the development of African political institutions; the political determinants of investment and economic growth; and the relationships between ethnicity, human capital, institutions, political participation and violence. Through the information component of the program, we aim to encourage quantitative research in African political economy by surveying, collecting and centralizing comparable political and economic data on sub-Saharan Africa. This part of the program aims to make data more accessible for researchers. More broadly however, it will point to holes in our knowledge and, we hope, will encourage researchers active in the discipline to collect and share important political and economic data.

Please visit our new Working Papers section for a selection of papers on Africa. Se also the new Legislative and Violence datasets, now available for downloading.

Layout of this Web site

In the Data area we have aggregated a number of the most commonly used publicly available variables used in the study of African political economy. The data is divided up into four main thematically organized areas. Together, these four data sets provide a good data "starter pack". The project has also worked to collect original and detailed data on political institutions and violence in 46 sub-Saharan countries between 1970 and 1995. This new data is not yet publicly available but will eventually be posted in this area of the website.

The Links area provides a gateway for students looking for further political and economic data. It surveys existing data and centralizes links to on-line sources of data. We also point to areas where we believe there is little or no data availability. The area is again thematically organized and is divided up into links for political institutions, for economic data, for violence data and for various types of control variables.

The Samples area contains a number of graphical representations of some political variables of interest. The area contains movie-maps of Africa that chart the occurrence of coups, guerrilla warfare and demonstrations over time. There are also links to two graphs that show the evolution of the executive and legislative institutions over time.

Acknowledgements

The program has benefited greatly from the financial support of the National Science Foundation, the World Bank, the Harvard Center for International Development, and the U.S Institute of Peace as well as from the support of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

People

The members of the Africa Research Program are