productivity trends as well as the pattern of structural change in BBC with those in five Asian countries (China, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia),<sup>14</sup> representing economies that set a good development precedent and that BBC may aspire to emulate, and five SSA economies (Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana, Senegal, and Botswana) roughly considered as SSA peers. Data dating as far back as 1960 allow us to compare recent trends in BBC with the golden age of Asia’s growth performance. The updated and extended GGDC database<sup>15</sup> provides annual data on value added and employment disaggregated into 10 broad sectors<sup>16</sup> (Timmer _et al_ ., 2015). We transformed these data into purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars to put the productivity performance of BBC in a comparative perspective. Note that the benchmarking analysis is not meant to be an exhaustive endeavor; however, the main conclusions of this paper were found to be robust to expanding the set of benchmark countries with more Asian and African economies that represent fair comparators.

# **2.1 Trends in Gross Value Added and Sectoral Contributions**

The structure of output in the three West African economies is broadly similar. GVA by sector of economic activity for Benin, Burkina Faso, and Cote d’Ivoire is shown in Figure 1 and Table 11. The share of agriculture in total GVA stood at 27 percent in Benin (in 2006), 33 percent in Burkina Faso (1998), and 24 percent in Côte d’Ivoire (2002) and declined by 5 percentage points (ppts), 7 ppts, and 3 ppts over the period until 2015, respectively. Manufacturing’s share of output plunged in all three countries. Benin and Burkina Faso saw a particularly striking drop of about 5 ppts between 2005 and 2015. In contrast, commerce’s share in GVA remained stagnant at about 12-14 percent in Benin and Côte d’Ivoire, and at 11-12 percent in Burkina Faso. Services has superseded agriculture as the largest contributor to the national economy and currently contributes over 50 percent of total output in BBC.

Real GVA increased in all economies, despite variations across countries and over time. Of the three countries, Burkina Faso experienced the highest and most stable output growth since the late 2000s. GVA in Benin and Burkina Faso increased by about 36 percent and 48 percent between 2005 and 2015, respectively. Côte d’Ivoire, however, experienced a slight increase, particularly during the 2000s, owing to a decade-long political crisis that took a heavy toll on the economy. Economic activity rebounded in the early 2010s as evidenced by the nearly 40 percent GVA growth since 2011. On a sector-specific basis, output growth in the agricultural sector stands at around 2 percent in Benin and Côte d’Ivoire, and 4 percent in Burkina Faso. Despite its less-than-stellar growth, agriculture accounted for most of the increase in total output due to its large weight. Some sectors (notably finance, utility, and mining) saw hefty growth. Manufacturing expanded at an annual average rate of 2 percent in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, while it grew only meagerly in Benin.

# **2.2 Trends in Employment**

To facilitate understanding of employment trends, we first briefly highlight the key demographic trends.<sup>17</sup> Benin’s population was about 7.5 million in 2006 and increased to nearly 10 million in 2015. The working-age population increased from 3.8 million (about 53 percent of total population) in 2006 to 4.5 million (54 percent) in 2010 and 5.3 million (55 percent) in 2015. The population of Burkina Faso increased from 11 million in 1998 to about 13 million in 2005 and 18 million in 2014. Similarly, the working-age population was about 5 million (about 51 percent) in 1998 and increased to 6 million

> 14These countries constitute fair comparators since BBC generally envision transformation into a semi-industrialized economy in the foreseeable future, a path well-trodden by the Asian economies in our sample.

> 15The GGDC data on value added come from national accounts while the employment data were constructed using data on total employment levels and sectoral distribution from household surveys and data on growth in employment between census years from labor force surveys.

> 16Note that, to ensure comparability with our analysis, we merged two of the service sectors (government services and community, social, and personal services) into a single one, namely ‘other services’, reducing the total number of sectors to nine.

> 17It is, however, important to bear in mind that significant data discrepancies may exist across different sources. For instance, total population and working age population from Census data might not conform to those from LFS reports. To ensure consistency between demographic statistics and employment data, we use information on both variables form survey reports. However, the focus should be on the broader picture rather than on the exact numerical figures.

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