Publications
For submission of articles or Working Papers to CEsA, please send an email to: comunicacao@cesa.iseg.ulisboa.pt
Working Paper 191/2023: Programas de transferência condicionada de rendimento e a viragem à esquerda na América Latina
Abstract:
In the last three decades, two phenomena have emerged and expanded in waves in Latin America: Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs and the arrival of left-wing governments to power. This scenario is set in a historic period of economic recovery in the Region, especially with the “commodity boom”, providing the resources and political space needed to govern on the left and promote social policies. Transferência condicionada de rendimento e a viragem à esquerda na América Latina works with the research hypothesis that left-wing governments were the ones that most created, supported and expanded this type of public policy in Latin America in the period 2000-2020. Thirthy-two CCTs were mapped, implemented by 18 countries in the Region, as well as their presidents and policy guidelines. In addition to reporting on the evolution of the implementation of these policies, this work carried out a quantitative analysis based on IDB and ECLAC databases about the beginning and end of these programs, as well as the evolution of the coverage of beneficiaries. The main conclusions indicate that the hypothesis is only partially and limitedly confirmed. In short, left-wing governments achieved the highest numbers in absolute terms regarding the creation and expansion of CCTs in the region, but centrist governments achieved the highest rates of new programs and increased coverage (in relative terms) – with subtle differences in outcomes between left-wing and centrist governments. Thus, we conclude that the adoption and expansion of CCTs among Latin American countries in the last two decades was largely independent of the political orientation of the governments considered. It was, above all, a regional stake that crossed ideologies, historical moments and economic crises to redistribute income over the last 20 years to more than 100 million people.
Quotation:
Rios Franco, M. (2023). “Programas de transferência condicionada de rendimento e a viragem à esquerda na América Latina“. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/CSG – Documentos de Trabalho nº 191/2023
Working Paper 190/2023: Study of the value chain of the tourism sector in Angola as an alternative economic, social, and environmental development strategy under the Prodesi programme
Abstract:
Angola has been facing several economic and social problems, with one of the most important being related to the country’s long tradition of dependency on oil as a major external revenue. Due to this situation, the country’s income has been slowing and there is a need to find alternative strategies to increase the liquidity of the economy without which Angola would lack the necessary funds to increase investment and proceed with adequate policies to combat social exclusion and eradicate the flows of poverty. Aware of this situation, the government implemented the national PRODESI project, whose aim is to accelerate the process of the diversification of the nation’s economy. To this end, the project aims to promote production and exports in the non-oil sectors, as well as in sectors with a strong potential for import substitution. One of these areas is tourism, as a means of developing some of the country’s regions and provinces, and also in order to benefit populations living in worse conditions, whilst diversifying the economic restrictions. The focus of actions in PRODESI foresees that the to accelerate the diversification of the economy, whether through import substitution or through diversification and an increase in exports, will be directed towards the production of goods and services or the implementation of new strategies designed to gain critical mass and create intra and intersectoral relationships, such as in the case of tourism. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to identify the main weaknesses of the core value chain of tourism and to propose a set of measures and recommendations to be implemented within the scope of PRODESI. The main objective is to ensure that this activity effectively contributes to diversifying Angola’s economy in a sustainable path and that it helps leverage the increase in national production in a faster and more efficient way and thus significantly help decrease the dependency on imports and increase the export basis, which can be achieved through adopting a strategy of diversification, based on both international and national tourism. 3 Methodologically, several studies were consulted and various meetings and in-depth field visits were made, between January and March 2000, in the provinces of Luanda, Malange, Huíla, and Namibe. Several interviews were carried out up until 2021with major players (ranging from ministers through to national directors and other experts) and tourist organizations (Ministries, Travel Agencies, and entrepreneurs). It is estimated that in the next 10 years Sub-Saharan Africa will register a growth in tourism superior to the global average, regardless of the COVID pandemic. Study of the Value Chain of the Tourism Sector in Angola as an Alternative Economic, Social, and Environmental Development Strategy Under the Prodesi Programme concluded that even though tourism in Angola still faces a deficit at several levels, the country nevertheless has a set of natural resources and tourism attributes that, if properly explored and used, could provide an alternative way for the future development of Angola’s society. Angola still faces residual tourism receipts from tourism activity as well as in total international incoming tourists, and therefore Angola’s national government may have a huge opportunity to implement a suitable tourism strategy (both for internal and external flows), in order to not only reinforce its importance but also to benefit the population, fight poverty, and diversify economic activities, as defined in the PRODESI strategy.
Quotation:
Sarmento, E.M. 2023. “Study of the Value Chain of the Tourism Sector in Angola as an Alternative Economic, Social, and Environmental Development Strategy Under the Prodesi Programme“. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/CSG – Documentos de Trabalho nº 190/2023
Working Paper 189/2023: Fragilities and shocks effects on households and communities in West Africa
Abstract:
Shocks are drivers of fragility yet most works on fragility in Africa use the tag “fragile state(s)” with less focus on the drivers of fragility in its institutions, states, and economies. Shocks are cardinal to the entrenchment or stability of any system. The Covid-19 pandemic revealed how fragile the world is including the “developed” or “advanced” systems. Today, households, businesses, and communities in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa suffer the effects of a triple whammy (climate change, the pandemic and Russia/Ukraine War) including effects of history and an unfavourable global system all of which leaves them in hunger, poverty and vulnerable conditions. Fragilities and Shocks Effects on Households and Communities in West Africa used secondary sources to revisit the effects of these shocks on households, and communities in West Africa through the lens of common resources. The recent shocks effects prevalent in all these countries is higher than reported and would affect West Africa´s growing population in the foreseeable future with the absence of safety nets or effective interventions. The absence of shocks preparation in the subregion is not sustainable and adds up to the sustenance of the revolving circle of fragility in the subregion.
Quotation:
Agulonye, U.V.P. 2023. “Fragilities and Shocks Effects on Households and Communities in West Africa“. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/CSG – Documentos de Trabalho nº 189/2023
Working Paper 188/2023: A identidade nacional na Guiné-Bissau: um ensaio exploratório inspirado na metodologia de J.Cheek, S.Briggs, S.Smith e L.Tropp
Abstract:
The investigation of A Identidade Nacional na Guiné-Bissau – Um ensaio exploratório inspirado na metodologia de J.Cheek, S.Briggs, S.Smith e L.Tropp is defined as exploratory and aims to evaluate whether the methodology of inquiry and analysis of identity. created by J. Cheek, S. Briggs, S. Smith and L. Tropp, can be adapted to a fragile state like Guinea-Bissau. This methodology consists in the assessment of the importance attributed by the respondents of 70 sentences from which the characteristics of individual and social identity (family and collective) are extracted. The sentences were sent by digital means to 102 Guineans known in person or only by Facebook with request for response and dissemination and obtained 183 responses. These answers, calculated according to the methodology adopted, allowed to define some identity characteristics of the respondents. We tried to interpret these results using other surveys made since 2014 in Guinea-Bissau with different themes. It is concluded by realizing that this is a method that can contribute to the knowledge of the national identity of Guineans, but insufficient. This conclusion remains to be demonstrated if it is carried out with a statistically significant sample.
Quotation:
Sangreman, C., Magalhães, J., Faria, R. (2023). “A Identidade Nacional na Guiné-Bissau – Um ensaio exploratório inspirado na metodologia de J.Cheek, S.Briggs, S.Smith e L.Tropp“. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/CSG – Documentos de Trabalho nº 188/2023
Desafios para Moçambique, 2022
Abstract:
This issue of Desafios para Moçambique (2022) comes as the country faces enormous challenges – the war in Cabo Delgado, with some signs of expansion into other provinces; the Rovuma basin gas extraction and liquefaction projects, which realise some 24 Challenges for Mozambique 2022 Introduction of the greatest challenges in Mozambique’s economic history; the lingering effects of the global crisis, the bursting and implosion of the economic bubble, of which the sovereign debt crisis was a manifestation, and the social and economic after-effects of the covid-19 pandemic. These challenges and crises stimulated research and resulted in lessons, some of which are developed in this issue. Recently ended in Maputo, the trial of some of the state agents and private agents involved in the illicit international financial transactions that resulted in the odious debts. What was already clear before – that these illicit transactions are a reflection of more general dynamics of expropriation, privatisation and financialisation of the state for private accumulation of capital, even if this is done at heavy social costs – has, if possible, become clearer. The hypothesis that the legal process, which we had the opportunity to follow for about a year and a half, only touched on the recipients of commissions for corruption and influence peddling, the executors of the great default against the public purse, was confirmed.
Quotation:
Castel-Branco, C.N., Ali, R., Chichava, S., Forquilha, S., Muianga, C. (2022) Desafios para Moçambique, 2022. IESE. Maputo, Moçambique. ISBN: 978-989-8464-58-3
Working Paper 187/2022: Resiliência em Países Frágeis – uma investigação exploratória em curso
Abstract:
Resiliência em Países Frágeis – uma investigação exploratória em curso started in 2017 when the director of a service directorate of the Joint Research Center, at ECAS in Geneva, invited Prof. Carlos Sangreman to an exploratory study on resilience in Guinea-Bissau with the title Context specific risk perception and resilience patterns for individuals and communities (urban/non-urban) – the case of people in Guinea-Bissau. The study was carried out on the basis of the survey whose form is included in this Working Paper, gave rise to the attached article in an international journal and to a PhD thesis in progress at the University of Aveiro. The partnership between JRC and Cesa also involved Professor Alexandre Abreu and Master Jessica Santos, as well as Carlos Sangreman. From the JRC were Chistophe Quétel, Guy Bourdin and Ilektra Lemi. A survey was conducted in all regions and capital of the country to 210 households, with a previous pilot to 36 to refine the questionnaire in this partnership: project Enquêtes de terrain sur la perception du risque et la résilience des ménages en Guinée-Bissau Projet: Ares(2018)2381703 – 04/05/2018. Centre Commun de Recherche (JRC) de la Commission Européenne, Direction E, and CESA – Centre for Studies on Africa and Development of the University of Lisbon.
Quotation:
Sangreman, C., Martins, D., Quetel, C. Abreu, A. e Bourdin, G. (2022). “Resiliência em Países Frágeis – uma investigação exploratória em curso”. CEsA/CSG/ISEG/ULisboa – Documentos de Trabalho nº 186/2022
Working Paper 186/2022: Estado, Nação e Etnicidades em Moçambique
Abstract:
The processes of state and nation building begin soon after independence and establish a link between them, although each has its own logic. While the nation refers to collective identity, the State refers to the existence of a central-level political authority, respected throughout the territory. As evidenced during the text, a significant part of the State structure that emerged after national independence was the result of the Portuguese colonial legacy, idealized by FRELIMO’s ruling elite and implemented as a project of formation of the “New Man”, which occurred in an imperative way and through uniformizing policies. Estado, Nação e Etnicidades em Moçambique analyses the process of State and Nation building in Mozambique, whose population is characterised by a diversity of ethnicities. The first section presents a reflection on the foundations, the main actors and the actions towards the formation of the nation-state. In the second, we discuss the relationship between nationalism and socialist ideology, the latter interpreted in the post-independence period as the only path that would lead to development and to a society free from exploitation. With the 1990 constitution, a new order of political and economic liberalisation came into force. We seek to critically examine the political process underway in the country, in defiance of the dominant conceptions in the media, government, business and academic circles. To this end, we rely on bibliographic research and official documents, in addition to the experiences of two scholars who develop work in Quelimane, capital of Zambézia province in central Mozambique.
Quotation:
De Melo, C. M., Material Alves, G. e Martins, M. D. (2022). “Estado, Nação e Etnicidades em Moçambique”. CEsA/CSG/ISEG/ULisboa – Documentos de Trabalho nº 186/2022
As Perspetivas de Cooperação Económica entre Portugal e a China
Abstract:
As Perspetivas de Cooperação Económica entre Portugal e a China exposes how Since the state visit of President Xi Jinping to Portugal in December 2018, a framework for diplomatic relations between Portugal and China has been established, with a high level of cooperation in areas such as economy and trade, investment and finance, energy, technology, blue economy, education and culture. Of the 17 cooperation protocols signed then between Portuguese and Chinese governmental and private institutions, one is of particular relevance because it structures in a very significant way the level of cooperation between the two countries and its framework in the new global context. I am referring to the cooperation protocol between the governments of Portugal and China, within the framework of the Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative and the New 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The presence of Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa at the “Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation”, which was held in Beijing from 25 to 27 April 2019, confirms the importance of the signing of this protocol and the prospects for economic cooperation that it opens, both in bilateral and multilateral relations. According to the signed document, the vision of the multilaterality of this cooperation is expressed with regard to other EU countries but implicit in the relationship with other Portuguese-speaking countries, mostly African developing countries, with the Belt and Road Initiative (IFR) focusing especially on connectivity between countries aimed at sustainable development objectives.
Quotation:
Fernanda Ilhéu (2019), As Perspetivas de Cooperação Económica entre Portugal e a China. O Economista-Anuário da Economia Portuguesa, 32ª Edição, Ordem dos Economistas, ISBN 1646-9909, pp:40-45, Lisboa.
De escravos a indígenas: O longo processo de instrumentalização dos africanos (séculos XV-XX)
Abstract:
De Escravos a Indígenas: o Longo Processo de Instrumentalização dos Africanos (Séculos XV-XX), which brings together a set of texts written over forty years and dispersed in publications of diverse nature, not always easily accessible, aims to contribute to a renewal of historiography on the relations between Portugal and Africa, in the specific field of the forms of instrumentalisation of Africans carried out by the Portuguese for almost five centuries. A long process, whose internal nature proved capable of metamorphosis and reconversion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ensuring the continuity of the violent ‘use’ of African populations, resorting to a new classificatory apparatus – savages, indigenous, assimilated – aimed at keeping Africans within the sphere of Portuguese domination, contributing to legitimising their enslavement and fixing distorting interpretations of History.
If a first line of study aims to review the history of slavery and slave trafficking and their ideologies in spaces of Portuguese ‘occupation’ like Angola, a second line of study privileges iconographic documents as historical sources, emphasizing their historical and informative dimension. Finally, the third line of this study seeks to highlight the evolution of the process of Portuguese instrumentalisation of Africans, which resorts to unprecedented classificatory categories – savage, indigenous, assimilated – and to practices that emerge from the slave labour of the past to ensure the colonial exploitation of African populations.
Value judgments, commodification, objectification, exploitation, ridiculing of African men fabricated Portuguese imaginaries that reduced the black/African to slavery, the savage/indigenous to lazy, thieving and drunk, the assimilated/’civilised’ to a ridiculous and negative copy of the white/Portuguese, enshrining the inferiorization of Africans, and in the same movement, glorifying the Portuguese ‘race’, hierarchizing the humanities and valuing the dimension and nature of the Portuguese actions, first slave-owning and then colonialist, that have left their mark on Portuguese society to this day.
Quotation:
Henriques, Isabel C., De Escravos a Indígenas: o Longo Processo de Instrumentalização dos Africanos (Séculos XV-XX), Lisboa, Ed. Caleidoscópio, 2019.
Qualidade da Justiça na Guiné-Bissau. Avaliação e recomendações.
Abstract:
The debate on justice is fundamental to understanding the conditions for the realisation of fundamental rights. The reflection on justice and human rights in Guinea-Bissau, which permeates the project “Cooperation in the Promotion of Human Rights: the case of Justice in Guinea-Bissau in the Rights Observatory”, promoted by ACEP and CEsA and funded by Camões-ICL, is part of the work of both organisations with the Guinean League of Human Rights in the Rights Observatory. Since 2015, this Observatory has been collecting and analysing data, throughout the territory of Guinea-Bissau, on the realisation of social and economic rights, and the reflection on justice represents a contribution to stimulating debate and knowledge on one of the most important monitoring areas for the country’s development. Furthermore, ACEP participated, as an associated organisation, in a project of the Guinean Human Rights League on impunity in Guinea-Bissau, and researchers from CEsA have carried out research and published articles on justice, the State and international cooperation in this country. Qualidade da Justiça na Guiné-Bissau. Avaliação e recomendações was prepared based on the ideas and preparatory texts of a report for UNDP in 2015 on the quality of justice in Guinea-Bissau. This update sought, through some fieldwork with magistrates and judicial officials, to understand whether or not the instability that the country experienced between 2015 and 2019 allowed for some improvements in the quality of justice in Guinea-Bissau. It also included data collected by projects after 2015 on the population’s relationship with justice in general. At the same time, the option of not dealing with traditional justice was maintained, focusing only on the state justice system.
Quotation:
Sangreman, Carlos e Luis Vaz Martins (2019). “Qualidade da Justiça na Guiné-Bissau. Avaliação e recomendações”.In Justiça e direitos humanos na Guiné-Bissau, Debates e Perspetivas. ISBN 978-989-8625-18-2, 2019, ACEP e CESA, Lisboa.
