Fabrice Ewolo Bitoto

2 Publications in AERD

Author Publications

Natural resource rents and public spending on education in Africa: Does women's political empowerment matter?

By Fabrice Ewolo Bitoto

The increase in the number of women in political office is one of the most significant social trends of recent decades. Although still underrepresented, women's participation in decision-making bodies is increasing. This paper analyzes the moderating effect of women's political empowerment on the relationship between natural resource rents and public spending on education in a sample of 47 African countries over the period 2003–2020. This study employs several recent methods to effectively address the endogeneity issue, including the Generalized Method of Moments in System (GMM-S) and the Two-stage Instrumental Variables (2SIV) approach. Overall, the results show that natural resource rents reduce public spending on education, but their interaction with the index of women's political empowerment in composite and disaggregated form increases public spending on education in Africa. These results are tested at four levels of robustness, including the inclusion of additional control variables, the exclusion of outliers, and the use of alternative dependent and independent variables. We suggest improving the representation of women in African political decision-making. This could include quotas for women in decision-making bodies, mentoring programs for women leaders, and financial incentives for political parties that promote women's participation. Steps must also be taken to address structural barriers that prevent women from fully participating in political life, such as discrimination and violence against women. © 2024 Elsevier Ltd

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Does fiscal decentralization improve people's access to health and education services in Cameroon?

By Constant Fouopi Djiogap

We study the effects of fiscal decentralization on people's access to health and education services in Cameroon. It is generally believed that fiscal decentralization is an essential way to improve people's access to social services such as education and health. After reviewing the literature, we employed the Driscoll and Kraay estimate in a sample of 45 rural and urban municipalities for the period 2010–2020 to find our results. The results show that fiscal decentralization has a positive effect on the number of classrooms per pupil and the number of desks per pupil. At the same time, it negatively affects public hospitals per capita and the state of public hospitals. To improve people's access to education and health services in Cameroon, it is necessary to encourage the transfer of powers to municipalities. There is a need to control the actions of local officials to avoid mismanagement of resources that will not benefit the population. Also, the responsibility for selecting communal projects financed via the public investment budget within the framework of decentralization should be exclusively that of municipal executives, and not that of the central government. © 2024 African Development Bank (AFD).

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