Finally, something that I can agree with. If we want to fetishise numbers we should at least try to get them right. Morten Jerven at FP: Today, due to the uneven application of methods and poor availability of data, any ranking of countries by GDP is misleading. The basic problem is that many countries have… Read More »
Jolyon Ford of Oxford Analytica: I wonder if we should perhaps think of sub-Saharan Africa as a collection not so much of jointly emerging markets, but of diverging ones. Last week I was privileged, under the umbrella of the commendable ‘Invest in Africa’ initiative, to join experienced businesspeople in London discussing endemic inaccurate negative perceptions by outsiders of… Read More »
The African Peacebuilding Network (APN) of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) invites research grant applications from African researchers, policy analysts, and practitioners working on conflict and peacebuilding at universities and research institutions or regional governmental and non-governmental organizations in Africa. About the African Peacebuilding Network The APN promotes independent African research and analysis on… Read More »
Call for papers for a special issue of African Identities to be published in the summer of 2012 (African Identities: Journal of Economics, Culture and Society) More than a decade and half ago, Donal Cruise-O’Brien (1996) had declared that the African youth were ‘a lost generation.’ This fatalistic summation of the fate of the African… 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 »
Extracts: Collier’s work is not informed by any explicit, overarching theory of development or any historical perspective that might inform one; nor does he offer any social analysis. There is an implicit theory of human behaviour, which is radically reductionist—individual economic self-interest rules. In this view, history appears to be a continuum of ‘14th-century reality:… Read More »
Abstract The report provides a comparative study of the impact of Asian companies on the two leading oil producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria and Angola. The report shows that Asian companies that gained a foothold in the Nigerian oil sector in return for their commitments to invest in downstream and infrastructure projects failed to… Read More »
Maybe a fallout of the current global crisis is a kindler, gentler IMF. The Fund just published a staff position note titled Fiscal Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa in Response to the Impact of the Global Crisis The executive summary: The global financial crisis poses significant challenges to fiscal policies in Sub-Saharan African countries. Growth will… Read More »