Content: Opinion

  • Where Climate Despair Fades 

    Saving the planet Earth would be cheap; it might even be free. But will anyone believe the good news? I have just been reading two new reports on the economics of fighting climate change: a big study by a blue-ribbon international group, the New Climate Economy Project, and a working paper from the International Monetary […]

  • Policing Malnutrition

    Malnutrition in Ethiopia has a dramatic negative impact on the lives of children. Various reports show the national trends of stunting, wasting and being underweight at 44.4, 9.7 and 28.7pc, respectively. Nutritional indices indicate that there is a lack of iron, iodine and Vitamin A in Ethiopian foods, which contributes to these national public health […]

  • Demonetising Democracy

    The major battle of the post–World War II global economy was a fight over alternative economic systems: Did Communism or capitalism provides the best way of achieving growth and prosperity for all? With the fall of the Berlin Wall, that battle was over. But there is a new one emerging: What form of market economy […]

  • When History Repeats Itself

    The depression that followed the stock-market crash of 1929 took a turn for the worse eight years later, and recovery came only with the enormous economic stimulus provided by World War II, a conflict that cost more than 60 million lives. By the time recovery finally arrived, much of Europe and Asia lay in ruins. […]

  • Development Means Nothing

    The idea of “development” can still conjure up romantic visions among some about helping to improve the lives of people in the “third world” through sheer goodwill. Yet, we hold on to the term and defend it. We also hold on to the Millennium Development Goals like a drunk uncle: worthy and charming, but occasionally […]

  • More Crops for the Drop

    The United Nations has called drought the “world’s costliest natural disaster”, both financially, imposing an annual cost of six to eight billion dollars, and in human terms. Since 1900, it has affected two billion people, leading to more than 11 million deaths. That is because so much of the world is vulnerable. Currently affected areas […]

  • China: Growth Vs. Reform

    China’s transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy has neither been easy nor linear. The government has tried to liberalise certain sectors, although not all, and privatise industries, but certainly not all. Overall, one can argue that the dominance of the state-owned sectors has been maintained, with a special emphasis since the […]

  • No Good Governance without Political Commitment

    The Ethiopian political sphere witnesses divergent views on the issue of governance and effective public service delivery. At one end of the aisle sit the ruling EPRDFites who take pride in the reform efforts they have undertaken to improve public service provision and streamline good governance in the various tiers of the state structure. Though […]

  • Unwinding Threats

    Mohamed El-Erian is chief economic adviser to Allianz, a multinational financial services provider, and chair of US President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council.

  • Unwinding Threats

    Mohamed El-Erian is chief economic adviser to Allianz, a multinational financial services provider, and chair of US President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council.

  • Is Global Currency a Possibility?

    It is symbolic that the recent summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) in Fortaleza, Brazil, took place exactly seven decades after the Bretton Woods Conference that created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The upshot of the BRICS meeting was the announcement of a new development bank, which […]

  • The Population Bomb

    Africa’s population growth figures are staggering. The continent had a fertility rate of 5.4 children per woman between 2005 and 2010 – double that of any other region – and it is projected to decline only to 3.2 by 2050, still higher than other regions. The rate is under 2.5 in Asia and below two […]

  • Denying the Way Out

    Last week was an awkward week, in every sense of it. It was filled with many events that would have put me on the edge, had it not been for the bad flu, which itself was one of the unfortunate situations, I had been suffering from. In one of the days of the week, I […]

  • The Power of Water

    With the recent signing of Vietnam, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses of 1997 will soon come into effect. But the fact that it took almost 50 years to draft and finally achieve the necessary ratification threshold demonstrates that something is very wrong with the modern system […]

  • Teaching a Girl Teaches a Community

    In 1990, the Italian World Cup was played to the sound of Luciano Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma. In that same year, 12.6 million under-fives died from largely preventable diseases, and 104 million children of primary school age were out of school. Just six World Cups later, the millennium development goals (MDGs) have inspired dramatic progress for […]

  • Taxing the Sick

    The debate over access to affordable medicines in emerging and developing countries frequently overlooks a critical issue: Governments in these countries routinely slap tariffs and other taxes on vitally important drugs. While these measures tend to be modest revenue generators, they make the affected medicines more expensive, which can put them out of reach for […]

  • Investing Clever

    Last month, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledged 12 billion dollars in new development assistance to African governments and promised technology transfers to make high-speed rail a reality on the continent. His pledge reflects China’s rise to the status of major player in global development finance, with annual development assistance equaling or surpassing aid from the […]

  • Myths of Learning

    Citizens in the world’s richest countries have come to think of their economies as being based on innovation. But innovation has been part of the developed world’s economy for more than two centuries. Indeed, for thousands of years, until the Industrial Revolution, incomes stagnated. Then, per capita income soared, increasing year after year, interrupted only […]

  • No to Corruption

    At the G-7 meeting in Brussels, Belgium, this week, leaders of the world’s largest economies should address the real cancer eating away at the world’s economic and political systems – corruption. Corruption is the archenemy of democracy and development. It stifles growth and corrodes the contract between state and citizen. Taking action against corruption is […]

  • Climate Insanity

    Humanity has just about to run out of time to address climate change. Scientists have pointed out that a rise in temperature of 2º Celsius above pre-industrial levels will put the Earth in dangerous, uncharted territory. Yet we are currently on a path towards an increase of 4º Celsius or more this century. The last […]

  • A 700 Bln Dollar Question

    The world has generally become a much better place during the last half-century. Skeptics will scoff at the idea of overall improvement, but the numbers do not lie. The task we face now is to make the world even better. In the year 1960, 20 million children under the age of five died. In 2011, […]

  • From Gross Outcome to Inclusive Wealth

    The link between economic growth and human wellbeing seems obvious. Indeed, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), economic growth is widely viewed as the ultimate development objective. But it is time to rethink this approach. In fact, there is a rising disconnect between countries’ per capita GDP and their citizens’ wellbeing, as rapid output […]

  • Enlightened Cities

    Last month, a remarkable gathering occurred in Medellin, Colombia. Some 22,000 people came together to attend the World Urban Forum (WUF) and discuss the future of cities. The focus was on creating “cities for life” – that is, on promoting equitable development in the urban environments in which a majority of the world’s citizens already […]

  • Metaphors of Renaissance

    For many years, Ethiopia was the poster child for futility. Hip-deep in the mire of cross-generational poverty, the eastern African nation never could find the kind of traction that was allowing so many of its Sub-Saharan neighbours to gain a foothold towards progress. My visits there as an aid worker throughout the 1990s elicited bouts […]

  • The Business of Risks

    It has been almost eight years since investment became my preoccupation. I spend endless hours reading, tinkering, analysing and discussing about its various forms with many different people – from experts in the policy circle to investors with pocket full of money. Certainly, investment is an exciting economic activity. And, unlike other economic parameters that […]