African Urbanization and Development Research Initiative (AUDRI)
Migration from rural areas to cities is happening faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world. By 2035, according to a United Nations agency, half of all people on the continent will live in urban areas, and yet cities are relatively understudied compared to their rural counterparts.
With the goal of providing insights that can inform best practices for urban areas in Africa and beyond, the African Urbanization and Development Research Initiative (AUDRI) was launched in 2014 to study the changing economic, social, and political conditions of two of Africa’s largest cities—Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia; and Abidjan, the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire.
AUDRI researchers have created wide-ranging multiyear panel datasets on households and surveyed private firms in both cities. They have also conducted lab and in-the-field experiments and partnered with governments in both countries to provide analysis and data to inform government decision-making, including on a study of people’s attitudes towards schools reopening in Ethiopia during the COVID-19 pandemic and on the roll-out of a new health insurance model in Côte d’Ivoire.
The initiative’s data is publicly available to enable further studies by researchers at Stanford and other institutions. Recently, AUDRI researchers used their data to study how to measure relative poverty in the absence of administrative income data, tested how managers view and respond to competition in their industry, and examined how responsive public officials are to their constituents’ needs.
Team Members
- Pascaline Dupas, principal investigator (Princeton University)
- Marcel Fafchamps, principal investigator
- Daniel Agness, predoctoral fellow
- Laura Hernandez Nuñez, predoctoral research fellow
- Deivy Houeix, predoctoral research fellow
- Eva Lestant, predoctoral research fellow
- Fadela Sadou Zouleya, predoctoral research fellow
Research Outputs
Household Surveys
Preliminary Report on the Household Surveys in and Around Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (April 2018)
Report on the Wave 1 Household Survey in and Around Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (September 2025)
Report on the Wave 2 Household Survey in and Around Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (October 2025)
Report on the Wave 1 Household Survey in and Around Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (May 2021)
Report on the Wave 2 Household Survey in and Around Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (February 2024)
Firm Surveys
Report on the Wave 1 and Wave 2 Firm Surveys in and Around Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (October 2021)
Datasets
The datasets used to produce the reports above are or will be publicly available on Stanford Data Farm.
Publications
Abebe, G., Caria, S., Dupas, P., Fafchamps, M., & Getahun, T. (2025). Competition and Management Upgrading: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia.
Fafchamps, M., & Sadou Zouleya, F. (2025). Social Observability and Demand for Transfers: Experimental Evidence from a Low Income Population.
Dupas, P., Fafchamps, M., & Hernandez-Nuñez, L. (2024). Keeping Up Appearances: An Experimental Investigation on Relative Rank Signaling.
Dupas, P., Fafchamps, M., & Houeix, D. (2024). Eliciting Poverty Rankings from Urban or Rural Neighbors: Methodology and Empirical Evidence.
Dupas, P., Fafchamps, M., & Lestant, E. (2023). Panel Data Evidence on the Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Livelihoods in Urban Côte d’Ivoire.
Abebe, G., Agness, D., Dupas, P., Fafchamps, M., Getahun, T., & Lestant, E. (2021). Households’ attitudes towards schools reopening during COVID-19 in Ethiopia.
Chu, J., & Fafchamps, M. (2022). Labor conflict within foreign, domestic, and Chinese-owned manufacturing firms in Ethiopia.
Related News
A long-term focus on growing cities in Africa
Predoctoral fellowships expand access to global development research
Contact
For more information about the initiative, please contact King Center Executive Director Jessica Leino at jleino@stanford.edu.