There really is nothing much to the rebasing/re-benchmarking exercise. That it has not been done in such a long period, hence making the updated figures sound so huge, says more about governance in Nigeria than anything else. And any serious Nigeria analyst or private sector player is not really surprised by the figures. The point… Read More »
The Executive Summary: African countries south of the Sahara are poised to enjoy a surge in growth in their banking systems during this decade. The three main drivers of this development will be generally very high rates of economic growth, financial deepening to fulfil huge unmet needs for basic financial services and new technologies to… Read More »
Sometime last week I attended a podium discussion at the Berlin Humboldt University. The topic was Africa as the laboratory of globalisation. The idea was to discuss different ways in which Africa serves as a laboratory for ideas that then travel to other parts of the world. Some of those on the podium are STS… Read More »
According to a report by Bain & Company, quoted in a Reuters article: Bain Partner Andrew Tymms said the continent’s financial services industry will continue to grow at a compound annual rate of 15 percent to 2020, outpacing gross domestic product growth. “Retail banking will grow faster than corporate banking … to make up 38… Read More »
Keith Hart, the economic anthropologist who, from his research with urban slum dwellers in 1960s Ghana, coined the term ‘informal economy’, announced his intention a couple of days ago to kick-start the writing of a book, Africa’s Urban Revolution, with a series of blog posts. The first in the series appears today, and it is an… Read More »
You probably already know about the Freshlyground music video. Well, in what is probably the least surprising news of the day, the Zimbabwean government has pulled their work visas. Upcoming concerts in Zimbabwe are cancelled. Listen to band members Zo and Simon talk on the PRI’s Global Hits programme here [mp3].
John Comaroff thinks not: Once upon a time, anti-neoliberal theory posited an opposition between state and the free market, arguing that the antidote to the latter lay in the active intervention of the former. But the opposition is false, just another piece of the detritus of the modern history of capital. As states become mega-corporations… Read More »
From WSJ: Foreign consumer-goods companies including Coca-Cola Co., Nestlé SA and Unilever PLC have been in Africa for decades without much competition from local players. Now, home-grown companies are expanding aggressively across the continent, eager to accommodate a growing middle-class among the billion-person population. Examples? Among the most prominent of these consumer upstarts: African retailers… Read More »
POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS FOR RESEARCH ON ‘THE HUMAN ECONOMY’ UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA The Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria invites applications from suitably-qualified researchers for Post-Doctoral Fellowships to contribute to an interdisciplinary project on ‘The Human Economy’. People always insert themselves practically into economic life on their own account. But what they… Read More »
Keith Hart writes: The contrast between Zuma and Mbeki could hardly be greater, a tribal chieftain in the mould of Bolingbroke or Henry Tudor against Mbeki’s Othello, a man happy to be photographed dancing in Zulu warrior gear versus the austere western intellectual with his stiff suits and goatee beard. The number of Zuma’s wives,… Read More »