The question, then, is not how to exorcise labor standards from international trade agreements but how to include them in such a way as to improve labor productivity and not actually serve as an implicit trade barrier - a question to which, of course, there are no easy answers...[continue reading]
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...his Africa pictures convey a kind of intimacy that comes only with a certain distance. His perspective is lofty but not detached, and it's informed by his love of geophysics, which he studied as an undergraduate at Stanford University. His aerial pictures trace human patterns, too, in the slums radiating from Cape Town, South Africa, for example, or the crowds at a Soweto cemetery assembled for Saturday morning funerals...[continue reading]via 3QuarksDaily
What if wealthy Africans decided to invest their earnings in Africa instead of overseas? What if the 80 per cent of Africans who don’t have bank accounts were able to use financial services? And, what if African governments were able to invest their money in ways that will produce more goods and services?...The answer, says Samuel Gayi(of UNCTAD), is that “rates of savings [would] go up significantly and Africa could perhaps meet more of its own needs.” Turning Africa’s hidden homegrown wealth into profitable investments, however, will require new thinking and innovative policies by bankers and government officials alike...[continue reading]via African Loft
For the first time in human history more people live in cities than in rural areas. This triumph of the urban, however, does not entirely represent progress, as the number of people living in urban slums—often in abject conditions—will soon exceed one billion...His lyrical images capture the diversity of personal histories and outlooks found in these dense neighborhoods that, despite commonly held assumptions, are not simply places of poverty and misery.
Nigeria plans to launch its first international Naira-denominated bond within six months, dismissing concerns that the global financial crisis and the country’s exposure to falling oil prices will starve the $500m offer of buyers.
The government says the planned 10-year bond will lay the foundation for future bond issues by Nigerian companies and state governments by creating an international benchmark for sub-Saharan Africa’s second biggest capital market...[continue reading]
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Almost 3 million of America’s black population are foreign born and between 1980 and 2005 this population has more than tripled. By 2005, at least 1 million US born black children had at least one foreign born parent. To capture these developments, a new documentary film “The Neo African Americans” by director Kobina Aidoo looks at how “… rapid immigration from Africa and the Caribbean is transforming the African-American narrative.”
For Jeffrey Sachs the crash is an opportunity to gain support for the hopelessly utopian Millennium Development Goals of reducing poverty, achieving gender equality, and improving the general state of the planet through a centrally planned, government-led Big Push. “The US could find $700 billion for a bailout of its corrupt and errant banks but couldn’t find a small fraction of that for the world’s poor and dying,” he wrote in September. “The laggards in the struggle for the [goals] are not the poor countries ... the laggards are the rich world.” To Sachs and his acolytes, poor people can’t prosper without Western-country plans—and the crash only serves to turn Western governments inward. Therefore, progress on poverty is bound to suffer...[continue reading]via BOPreneur
Cassava is an excellent crop for conditions in Malawi and has the potential to vastly improve food security in famine-prone regions of the country. The difficulty is that the crop has little market value and many farmers are not interested in producing it because of this.Click here to watch the video
However, cassava has the potential to be processed into flour, which can be used as a substitute for wheat in baking products and also for the traditional Malawian meal, nsima. With rising wheat prices and crop failures limiting the production of maize flour, processed cassava is beginning to have promising market potential...[continue reading]
Kenya desperately needs development capital, and current inflows from remittances are fast becoming a source of financial resources.I propose that a Diaspora Development Bond be introduced with appropriate incentives to attract investment from our nationals in the Diaspora.Such a bond can be structured in such way that it does not compete with traditional remittances, as this would be an investment vehicle.
Diaspora development bonds are typically long-dated securities, which a country has to redeem only upon maturity. Thus, Diaspora bonds are a source of foreign financing that is long-term in nature.The Diaspora purchases of bonds issued by their country of origin are likely to be driven by a sense of patriotism and the desire to contribute to the development of the home country...[continue reading]
Catherine A. Odora Hoppers asserts:Africans need to move firmly towards acknowledging that knowledge primarily rests in people rather than in ICTs, databases or services, and thus that for Africa the challenge has to be that of how to build on local knowledge that exists in its people as a concomitant to working with global knowledge and information.
“As we survey the wreckage and note the unprecedented evacuation of billions of people from the arena of substantive innovation essential to their existence, we need to turn with force to the task of redefining key concepts such as ‘innovation’, its link with the goals of building sustainable societies and cognitive justice as key to the attainment of the long-term, and sustainable development,"...[continue reading]
Obama is not our saviour. Our capacity to leverage anything from Washington beyond good intentions will depend on how clear we are in terms of our own interests....One thing may change with Obama. African leaders’ who guilt trip western leaders for being interfering colonialists may have to find other default responses...[continue reading]
We are curious and, as the jua kali sector proves, we generate new innovative unheralded forms of knowledge all the time.As scholars such as Joyce Nyairo have shown, our most interesting forms of knowledge production and dissemination may not be happening within the universities.Kenya’s knowledge economy thrives and flourishes on matatu graffiti, on street corners, in community-based theatre productions.
But to say this is also to ask, then, about the role of our universities.If most of our knowledge is produced and disseminated elsewhere, what role do our universities have in the knowledge economy?
...We cannot continue to rely on that old, tired “I’m an African” bit so beloved of African participants in international conferences, who use that opening statement to disengage from the tough conceptual demands being placed on them.Locating ourselves is an ethical and political act. Disengaging from tough conceptual demands because of location is anti-intellectual...[continue reading]
From Obama's inaugural speech words that resonate for us here at Africa Unchained:In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.via Make Magazine
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In an interview with Fatima Mahjar of ResetDoc Talha Gibriel(of Asharq Al-Awsat) stated:Sudan is the “African Yugoslavia.” In my country there are several ethnic groups, religions, and over 200 dialects. Since our Independence in 1956 from the British Empire, Sudan has failed to build national unity; in fact we are not one nation. We have become one country only because the British Empire decided our borders, but the reality on the ground is another one. The other main problem causing conflicts in the country is the lack of democracy. The government in Khartoum thinks that using power will give stability to the country. However, the regime has never taken into consideration that democracy and the use of dialogue could be the solution to the crisis in the Sudan...[continue reading]
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“Part of the Obama lesson for this continent is that those who believe that leadership depends on religion, race, ethnic and other related issues are obviously living in the past. They are completely antiquated and are not to be counted upon as civilized people.
“What America has done is to gate-crash so many of us into the third millennium. Nigeria had an opportunity to show the way. Zimbabwe had an opportunity too. But we lost it because a few antiquated people never accepted the fact that all men are created equal, and that it is actually possible for a virtual outsider, but who is qualified to be a citizen of a nation, to rise to the top position of the country.”...[continue reading]
Mary Kimani writing in African Renewal:According to the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), women own about 48 per cent of all enterprises in Africa. But they have the hardest time gaining access to finance...According to IFC Operations Officer Mary Njoroge, “by focusing on established small and medium enterprises that are looking to expand,” the organizations hope to “increase the share of women’s enterprises that actually make it to middle and large scale.”...[continue reading]via African Loft
The NYTimes reports on a regional infrastructure initiative:Kenya and Uganda plan to build a new railway from the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa to cope with increased trade among the East African countries and their landlocked neighbors, officials said. The two countries are now served by a meter-gauge track built at the turn of the 20th century and officials say it carries less than 6 percent of freight destined for Kenya’s interior and countries in the region...[continue reading]via EmergeInvest
After 1985 the military regime systematically undermined the once-buoyant, fuel-driven economy of Nigeria. The country’s infrastructure collapsed. There were no plans for industrial and technological recovery. Local manufacturers couldn’t compete with the cheap foreign goods that were dumped daily on our shores: everything was imported, including toilet paper. Publishing was one of the businesses that was worst hit. What small market there had been, thanks to a pre-independence curiosity about African literature--which had encouraged energetic literary activity inside the country--fizzled out because ordinary people couldn’t afford to buy books for pleasure. The big publishing houses disappeared, to be replaced by small-time hustlers moonlighting as publishers...[continue reading]via 3QuarksDaily
There is increased interest in African infrastructure opportunities from a host of investors experienced in, and new to, African countries. Development finance institutions (DFIs) continue to play a lead role in advising and financing challenging projects. African and international banks are broadening their debt offerings to include equity for infrastructure projects, contractors are prepared to commit more equity and State-sponsored entities from countries that include Russia and China are taking on significant infrastructure projects...Infrastructure assets have long lives, and it is impossible to forecast every turn in the fortunes of a country or a sector over a 20- or 30-year period. Time will tell whether the private-sector transactions currently being structured and negotiated are pricing the risk correctly, but the indications are that Africa's risk continues to be over-rated and experienced investors are able to lock in superior, risk-adjusted returns...[continue reading]via Engineering News
The New York Times ran a story on its front page about the king of Swaziland, Mswati III, who leads a life of ostentatious luxury while the people of his small and proud nation struggle with poverty, malnourishment and HIV...In this political season of outrage, why get excited about a front-page story in the paper of record mocking the greedy king of some place in Africa? Because the story highlights how stereotypes and prejudices render real people in caricature, making it almost impossible to seriously assess their problems or devise real solutions to them; this is Africa's special affliction, and something very familiar to those in the Diaspora...[continue reading]
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“She started before she was ready,” he says. “We had the liberation struggle, then the civil war and all this time Angola was a child in an incubator, feeling the violence around her and suffering through each power cut in the hospital. Now, after the election, we have to see that there is a new beginning: Angola is ready; ready to grow, ready to develop.” ...If you have political and economic development like we have here, you need also cultural development. And this is a wonderful time for art in the country...[continue reading(PDF)]”This article is part of a larger piece (in the Sonangol magazine) on Luanda's aspirations to becoming an alternate Dubai-A New African city:
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Daniel Etounga-Manguelle writes:Thierry Verhelst is right in reminding us that social change cannot be imposed from outside, but, on the contrary, must constitute an endogenous cultural transformation. Moreover he is right in speaking of culture as a tool. To meet the challenges of our natural and social environment, we must constantly adapt our arsenal of technical, socio-economic and mystical resources. It is this adaptation which I call "Cultural Adjustment". It is the conditio sine qua non of any progress.
The impact of culture on politics, economics and social life is far from negligible. The present multifaceted crisis which has struck our countries full force, is at once a moral, political and economic crisis. It compels us to open our eyes to certain of our practices and attitudes which undoubtedly hold us back and prevent us from marching towards modernity...I believe that Africa must accept the need for cultural adjustment and hitch the African wagon to the world's train. This is the pre-condition for the emergence of an Africa which can face the world with respect.It will do this by demonstrating that we too can achieve levels of institutional efficiency, rates of economic growth, and alleviation of poverty that have been achieved elsewhere. I further believe that Africans are ready to transform their wagons into sleek carriages or even the new world-class locomotives of tomorrow...[continue reading]
David Robinson at Sociolingo reviews the The Meanings of Timbuktu:Jonathon Bloom begins the examination of the scholarly production of Timbuktu by looking at the unusual but crucial subject of paper. Never produced in sub-Saharan Africa, it was imported from North Africa at great cost and rather late to permit scholars to copy important works and write their own...[continue reading]
John Atta Mills won the run off of the presidential election in Ghana. Though the race was tight and close, the real winner in my books is Nana Akufo-Addo, a 64-year-old lawyer, the candidate of the New Patriotic Party who Atta Mills ran against. He promptly conceded the election just as the citizens of Ghana became increasingly apprehensive. If Africa had more leaders like this, much of the civil strife that occurs on the continent could be avoided...[continue reading]
In Africa News Fredrick Mugira writes about the "Death of African Soccer":The development of African soccer is very slow because Africans themselves lack interest in supporting and promoting local clubs. “How do you expect to develop Ugandan soccer alone?” he -Hajji Mulindwa Katabani an investor in Biharwe FC-laments. He says even people who have enough funds to support such teams shun them because they fear to risk their money in what he called, “such unprofitable ventures.”...If talented African football players leave their countries to play in foreign countries or leave this sport to find alternatives where they can earn a living, who then will develop local football? Abbas Sendyowa, is a committee member of the Pan African Confederation of African Football (CAF). “There is a problem of lack of interest from Africans themselves. Several Africans have a negative perception that English soccer is more entertaining than their local football, as a result this discourages local talents,” Sendowa contends. Africans must develop African football in the way they want it. This does not mean that it has to be on the standards of European soccer.”...[continue reading]Kind of ironic when you consider that Nigerian Business people are bidding for English clubs...what gives?
Africa as a whole needs science: it needs science to develop, to prosper, and to grow the reality-based community. So, as you'll see if you look at the guidelines, this carnival has an Africa-wide mandate: it covers any science or skeptical topic related to Africa and any science blogging by Africans. The aim, ultimately, is to promote the skeptical and scientific world view, but more concretely, to stimulate discussion, disseminate good blogging and to cultivate a greater sense of community among the small number of science-minded African bloggers.
Many have asked why Bangladesh continues to be mired in terrible poverty when it has such a large microfinance sector. The good ol’ basics matter more — property rights, open markets, human capital, innovation etc.Quoting Milford Bateman
A new policy research paper, Who Gets Credit?, published by the World Bank shows that economies benefit more when money is lent to firms rather than households. India is one of the 45 countries the economists have covered in their study.
The East Asian countries managed to develop brilliantly through channelling much, if not most, of their savings into serious growth-oriented sustainable business projects. This is why many East Asian countries may have started at similar GDP levels as Bangladesh in the 1970s but have since massively outpaced Bangladesh in terms of growth and development. Economics 101 shows conclusively how critical savings are to development, but only if intermediated into growth and productivity enhancing projects. If it goes into rickshaws, kisoks, chicken farms, traders and so on, then the country simply will not develop and sustainably reduce poverty...[continue reading]via World is Green
