Content: Opinion

  • Tests of Time

    I have lately been planning to make a stride in my career path. I believe the step would make my days more orderly and productive. While trying to do this, though, I find out that moving on is not an easy thing to do. One has not to only avoid binding old values, but one […]

  • Economic Growth, Ethiopian Style

    With the commodities slump dominating the headlines, many investors may have failed to notice that a previously unloved, non-resource country in the heart of Africa has been one of the world’s fastest-growing economies for a few years running. Ethiopia has been among Africa’s most impressive performers over the past decade, averaging 10.9pc annual growth in […]

  • Ubuntu in African Development

    Africa is uniquely poised to exploit a demographic dividend, arising from a huge component of youth in its population. This is in stark contrast to ageing economies in Asia, Europe and the Americas, particularly in Europe and Northeast Asia, and to a lesser extent in the US. Indeed, South Asia and Africa have been identified […]

  • Macro Adjustment: Now or Never

    As author John Steinbeck reminds us in his masterpiece, East of Eden, human nature is such that we forget quickly, but it should not and does not have to be that way when managing an economy. African economies in particular are significantly affected by booms and busts, which are created by fluctuations in commodity prices, […]

  • Economics of Low Oil Price

    Oil prices recently hit 27.56 dollars a barrel, their lowest level since 2003. The result is that it is now cheaper to buy a litre of gasoline in your local gasoline station than a litre of sparkling water. But the impacts of the price rout over the last 15 months looks very different depending on […]

  • Ending Inequality is Imperative

    Welcome to the world’s inequality countdown. In 2010, some 388 people owned as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population. Jump to 2014 and that 388 is down to 85 people. In 2015 the figure was 80, and today Oxfam has revealed that 62 rich individuals own as much wealth as the […]

  • Payment Plan for Universal Education

    The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which the international community adopted in September, 2015, include a commitment to provide every child with access to free primary and secondary education by 2030. Finding the additional 20 billion dollars per year, or more, that will needed to deliver on this commitment is one of the central objectives of […]

  • Reconstructing Disability’s Status Quo

    On January 23 each year, Berkeley, California, and the International Disability Movement commemorate their monumental hero and pioneer, Edward Verne Roberts, known worldwide as, Ed Roberts. The day is dubbed Ed Roberts Day. Why should the world celebrate Ed? Not only had Ed paved a breakthrough and developed an unprecedented critique that later grew to […]

  • Return of Capital Fundamentalism

    The idea that public investment in infrastructure – roads, dams, power plants, and so forth – is an indispensable driver of economic growth has always held powerful sway over the minds of policymakers in poor countries. It also lay behind early development assistance programmes following World War II, when the World Bank and bilateral donors […]

  • Cancer: Africa’s Silent Killer

    When one walks through cancer wards of public sector hospitals in Africa, the scenes are reminiscent of the battle to get AIDS treatment underway in the early 2000s. But now, hospital beds once filled with AIDS patients are occupied by those afflicted with cancers and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs). NCDs are no longer exclusively problems […]

  • Technology: A Third Force

    For centuries, we have tried to understand how our “animal nature” shapes our behaviour. Are we preordained by our genes to be who we are? Or are we products of our environment, that is, how we are raised and taught by our families, friends, schools, and communities? These are critical questions, and as a political […]

  • Global Trade’s Costly Dilemma

    Given the end of the Doha Round as we have known it, a major rethink of the WTO’s tariff-cutting approach is in order. What might tariff liberalisation negotiations for emerging economies look like if economists, instead of actual trade policy negotiators, established the agenda and negotiating priorities? The dominant terms-of-trade theory of trade agreements provides […]

  • Ethics of Corporate Social Responsibility

    Traditionally, corporations were responsible only to their owners; and their primary and only objective was profit maximization. Corporations’ responsibility towards the community and the environment in which they operate was overlooked. Hence, responsibility towards the community and the environment which is commonly known as corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a recent development in the area […]

  • A Search for Productive Equilibrium

    With the introduction of new technologies such as fertiliser and hybrid seeds, agricultural productivity has experienced an unprecedented rise in the past decades in almost all parts of the world. Not so in Sub-Saharan Africa, however, where yields have remained stagnant and adoption of modern agricultural technologies have woefully lagged behind. Why? Data from farm […]

  • Importing Exports

    Exports have nothing to do with satisfying people’s basic needs, such as education, health care, housing, power, water, telecoms, security, the rule of law, and recreation. But why should countries give precedence to satisfying the needs of distant foreign consumers? That, in a nutshell, is what many opponents of free trade and economic globalisation want […]

  • Commodity Conundrum

    The global commodity super-cycle is hardly a new phenomenon. Though the details vary, primary commodity exporters tend to act out the same story, and economic outcomes tend to follow recognizable patterns. But the element of predictability in the path of the commodity-price cycle, like that in the course of a roller coaster, does not make […]

  • The End of Low Interest Rates

    The past two decades have witnessed an extraordinary decline in both short- and long-term interest rates in the leading advanced economies, from levels of around four to six per cent in the 1990s to close to zero today. Although recent falls came after the global crisis and subsequent recession, the decline in yields, particularly for […]

  • Powers of Agent Banking

    In October 2015, the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) came up with a new regulation to make the financial industry sound. In the eyes of private banks, the regulation is a disaster. They argue that it is a mechanism to make the sector more conducive for the public-owned banks. Anyway, this regulation will be the […]

  • Banking – A Fight for the Cream

    Sewagegnehu Dagne is a banking professional. He can be contacted at sewagegnehu22@gmail.com.

  • The Climate Crossroads

    Gordon Conway (Prof.) is director of Agriculture for Impact, an independent advocacy, and chair of the Montpellier Panel.

  • The African Breadbasket

    On the first World Food Day in 1945, people around the world celebrated the creation of the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the launch of the first coordinated global action to combat hunger. This year, on the 70th World Food Day, countries are mobilising behind the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – one […]

  • Redrawing the World Bank

      Last week, finance ministers, central bankers and development economists gathered in Lima, Peru, for the World Bank’s annual meetings, where the debate focused on how the institution’s agenda fits our changing world. Holding the event in a developing country represented a welcome shift from the usual Washington, DC venue. Now, the Bank should make […]

  • Unlearning Green Revolution

    William Moseley is a professor of Geography and African Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, United States. This commentary first appeared on African Arguments. He can be followed on twitter at @WilliamGMoseley.

  • The Art of Sharing

    When Amazon was founded in 1994 and eBay the following year, they harnessed the connectivity of the Internet to create new, more efficient markets. In the beginning, that meant new ways of buying and selling books and collectibles; but now e-commerce is everywhere, offering customers new goods and used goods – and becoming a global […]

  • Banking Better Through POS

    A Point of Sale (POS) terminal is a device that provides customers of banks with access to financial transactions in public places. This machine solves the problem of carrying cash for the customers and decreases cash management cost for financial institutions. These days, POS accept not only debit and credit cards, but also gift cards […]