Approximating State Reach in Africa (1966-2017)

Prominent arguments hold that African states’ geography limits state capacity, impedes public service provision, and slows economic development. This data project presents comprehensive panel data on a proxy of local state capacity, travel times to national and regional capitals. These are computed on a yearly 5 x 5km grid using time-varying data on roads (since 1966 – see here) and administrative units (1945–2016, see here). The data has been presented in this article and can be accessed via this Github page which contains further details.

Citation

When using this dataset in your research, please include the following reference:

Müller-Crepon, Carl. (2021) State Reach and Development in Africa since the 1960s: New Data and Analysis. Political Science Research and Methods: FirstView.