Exploring Accessibility to Employment Opportunities in African Cities: A First Benchmark

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Putting a Price on Safety — a Hedonic Price Approach to Flood Risk in African Cities

“…To understand rents, we need to understand access to economic opportunities and how it influences housing markets. However, there are two significant data constraints, common to developing country cities which make it difficult to capture access to economic opportunities, particularly for SSA cities: 1) lack of information on job locations, and 2) lack of information on transit routes and travel times (Peralta-Quiros et al, 2019). This study captures access to economic opportunities using the spatial density of employment developed in Barzin et al (2022).…”

Linking Poverty-Based Inequalities with Transportation and Accessibility Using Mobility Data: A Case Study of Greater Maputo

“…Accessibility is considered to be the most prominent benefit of any transportation system (4). It focuses on ease of reaching desired destinations considering both the transportation system's efficiency and the land-use patterns of a city (5). Accessibility has been frequently associated with unemployment rates, property values, and increase in real wages (6).…”

“…Moreover, accessibility characterizes the education, health, and economic status of communities (7). Low accessibility in deprived regions can augment social inequalities and may result in self-sorting of underprivileged households into these impoverished regions (5). This topic is vital for planners and scholars in the domain of transportation justice and equity where no person or community is deprived by poor access to opportunities required for a meaningful life (8).…”

“…In SSA, these inequalities in accessibility have often been established using focus surveys and General Transit Specification Feed (GTFS) data (5,12). Surveys have been used to assess inequalities in the context of food availability (13), child malnutrition (14), water supply and sanitation (15), youth unemployment (6), maternal healthcare (16), land ownership and control (17), and social exclusion (18).…”

“…Inequalities in electrification have been investigated using satellite observations (23). The availability of GTFS data has triggered various studies evaluating transit accessibility and corresponding inequalities in SSA (5,12). Taxi GPS data (24) and Google Maps travel times (25) have been used to estimate driving accessibility.…”