Giovanni Carbone and Alessandro Pellegata (Università degli Studi di Milano)

“Political leadership and development in Africa: the Africa Leadership Change project and findings”

ABSTRACT: In an attempt to stem authoritarian rule and revive economic development, most sub-Saharan countries introduced multi-party elections in the early 1990s. How did the new mechanisms for selecting political leaders affected the consolidation of African states, the growth of their economies and the well-being of their citizens? To answer these questions, we built a new dataset – the Africa Leadership Change (ALC) dataset – and investigated empirically the link between political leadership and development dynamics in the sub-Saharan region over the entire 1960-2018 period. Our findings show that not only has Africa changed its leaders and the way they reach power, but also that the new leaders have started to change Africa.