Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum : Technical Paper 1. Socioeconomic Trends in the Lake Chad Region
The Lake Chad region, which is an economically-and socially integrated area spanning across four countries of Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria in north-west Africa, has been trapped in a vicious circle of suboptimal territorial development and fr...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/479281636439604559/Technical-Paper-One-Socioeconomic-Trends-in-the-Lake-Chad-Region http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36572 |
| Summary: | The Lake Chad region, which is an
economically-and socially integrated area spanning across
four countries of Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria in
north-west Africa, has been trapped in a vicious circle of
suboptimal territorial development and fragility. This note
shows that the Lake Chad region lags in multiple dimensions
of development ranging from poverty, human capital, and
access to services. A poverty rate in the Lake Chad region
is found to be much higher than other parts of the countries
surrounding the lake. The regional poverty rate in the
Extreme North region of Cameroon (59 percent) is three times
higher that of the rest of the country (19 percent). In
Nigeria, the Lake Chad region203 has a poverty rate (72
percent) nearly twice as high as in the rest of the country
(38 percent). Chad is the only exception, where the poverty
rate in the country’s Lake Chad region (31 percent) is lower
than the rest of the country (40 percent).204 This is
explained by the fact that the Chad region around the lake
lies near the capital of the country, with a consequently
higher urbanization rate and a relatively high population
density. The note is organized as follows. Section 2.2
provides key statistics on poverty, sector of work, and
human capital indicators in the Lake Chad region vis-à-vis
other parts of the country and examine how the Lake Chad
lags behind in different dimensions. Section 2.3 provides a
diagnostic of economic geography with a focus on three
dimensions of density, distance and division. Section 2.4
identifies a set of structural factors, aggregate shocks and
selected policies that might be associated with the dynamics
of economic activity and social inclusion across the region. |
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