Systemic Fatigue as an Omitted Variable in African Economic Measurement: A Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda

Official economic statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa are compiled under data-collection conditions that differ systematically from those in most other developing regions: longer and more burdensome household surveys, sparser administrative records, a very large informal sector, and recurring fiscal crises that strain the statistical agencies themselves. This paper argues that these conditions are not merely a source of random noise but a set of correlated, directional measurement biases-here grouped under the label systemic fatigue-that plausibly cause official statistics to understate African economic activity relative to other developing regions. We review the empirical literature on respondent and enumerator fatigue in African household surveys, summarize known measurement gaps arising from informality and fiscal stress, and propose an omitted-variable framework for testing whether fatigue proxies absorb part of the apparent Africa/non-Africa performance gap in standard growth and fiscal models. We specify a three-way comparative test, a candidate set of measurable proxies, an identification strategy, and the data sources needed to implement it. We are explicit throughout that the framework is a proposal : it has not yet been estimated, and the paper's contribution is to motivate and pre-specify the test-including its falsification condition-rather than to report a result.