Doing More with Less: How Cost-Benefit Analysis is Helping Africa Make Smarter Development Choices - PAN AFRICAN VISIONS
By Dr. Baboloki Semele *Every government faces the same dilemma: unlimited needs but limited resources. Across Southern Africa, policymakers are confronted with difficult decisions every day. Should. . .
. Baboloki Semele *Every government faces the same dilemma: unlimited needs but limited resources. Across Southern Africa, policymakers are confronted with difficult decisions every day. Should governments invest more in agriculture or healthcare? Should they expand roads or irrigation? Is increasing spending on education better than subsidising energy? Which interventions will deliver the greatest impact for every dollar invested? These are no longer questions that should be answered by intuition, politics, or public pressure alone. Increasingly, they should be answered by evidence. This is the philosophy underpinning the specialised Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) training convened by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which brought together more than 140 government officials from across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) second week of July 2026. The programme equipped attendants with practical tools to evaluate public investments and prioritise interventions that generate the greatest social, economic, and environmental returns. Opening the seminar,Dr. Bjørn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and lead facilitator, challenged participants to rethink how governments allocate scarce public resources. “The fundamental challenge is that resources are limited while the list of good intentions is almost endless. Cost-benefit analysis helps governments identify where every dollar can do the most good. ”Dr. Lomborg explained that every country faces difficult choices because no government has sufficient resources to fund every worthy programme. He stressed that evidence-based prioritisation enables policymakers to move beyond emotion or political pressure and instead invest where the greatest impact can be achieved. Development planning has traditionally been driven by political commitments, public demand, or historical spending patterns. While these considerations remain important, they do not always ensure that scarce public resources are directed toward interventions with the highest impact. Cost-benefit analysis introduces a disciplined approach by comparing the total costs of a proposed intervention with the measurable benefits it is expected to generate over time. In its simplest form, it asks a powerful question:If we spend one dollar today, how much value will society receive in return?The answer enables governments to distinguish between investments that are merely desirable and those that offer exceptional value for money. Rather than asking,“Is this programme important?”, policymakers are encouraged to ask,“Is this the best investment we can make with the resources available?”Dr. Lomborg has consistently argued thatgood intentions alone are not enough. Governments, he says, should strive to maximise the impact of every public dollar by investing first in interventions that produce the highest returns for society. During the training, participants explored how CBA can be applied across sectors including health, education, agriculture, infrastructure, nutrition, climate resilience, trade, governance, and social protection. One of the most striking lessons was that not all development investments deliver the same returns. Evidence presented during the workshop demonstrated that relatively modest investments in child nutrition can yield extraordinary long-term benefits. Investing approximatelyUS$97 per childduring the first two years of life could generate benefits valued atUS$4,365, representing a benefit-cost ratio of45:1. Similarly, expanding tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment programmes was shown to generate approximatelyUS$43 in benefits for every dollar invested, reflecting significant gains in productivity and lives saved. Universal access to family planning also emerged as one of the highest-return investments. Providing contraception to women currently without access could substantially reduce maternal and newborn deaths while generating major economic gains, with estimates suggesting returns of aroundUS$120 for every dollar invested. Perhaps the most dramatic example came from trade policy. According to analyses presented during the training, reducing global trade barriers has the potential to produce exceptionally high economic returns, illustrating how policy reforms can sometimes outperform expensive infrastructure projects. Dr. Lomborg encouraged participants to view public expenditure as an investment portfolio rather than a collection of isolated projects. Instead of asking how much governments can spend, he challenged policymakers to ask which investments will produce the greatest improvements in people’s lives. “It is not about spending more,” he explained during the discussions. “It is about spending smarter. ”That message resonated strongly with participants, particularly as many SADC countries grapple with rising debt, climate shocks, competing development priorities, and increasing pressure on public finances. As Africa advances implementation of Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals, the demand for smarter public investment decisions will only increase. Population growth, urbanisation, technological change, and climate variability will intensify pressure on already stretched public finances. Every investment decision will carry greater consequences. Training public officials in cost-benefit analysis therefore represented more than a technical exercise as it is an investment in better governance. When policymakers consistently ask not only“What do we want to achieve?”but also“Which investment delivers the greatest benefit for our citizens?”, public policy becomes more strategic, transparent, and accountable. *Dr Baboloki Semele is a youth and gender advocate and expert validator with the African Union High-Level Panel on Emerging Technologies (APET) he canbe reached atbabolokis@ygef. org. bw