Economics

Introduction

I will start with a paradoxical syllogism.

·      One: The World Trade Organisation (WTO) - a multilateral trade negotiations body - is a veritable war machine controlled by the West.

“Today, Africa is a Continent of COMPETING BEGGAR NATIONS. We vie with one another for favours from our former colonial masters; and we deliberately fall over one another to invite neocolonialists to come to our different territories to preside over our economic fortunes…

Both access to resources and market expansion have been at the forefront of Africa-EU trade relations, and closer trade activities are particularly developed between resource-rich African countries and the European Union.

Nicknamed the “Big Four” Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young (EY), KPMG and Price Water House Coopers (PwC) are the big four audit firms that operate in concert as an inescapable cartel in the world of multinationals and global finance.

The African middle class is of huge interest to business. This was confirmed again recently by well attended seminars in South Africa’s big cities to discuss “African Lions: groundbreaking study on the middle class in sub-Saharan Africa”.

Yilmaz Akyuz is one of very few people who have years of experience analysing the global financial system both at the academic as well as at policy-making levels.

Michael Gove, the Tory politician, declared during the Brexit referendum campaign that the British people had had enough of ‘experts’, by which he meant the economists who were predicting the disastrous consequences of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union.

In recent years the Langaa Research & Publishing of Cameroon has published some excellent titles, among which is Richard Kamidza’s book on Zimbabwe’s trade negotiations with the European Union.

In most African countries, traditional leaders, chiefs and kings run communal land is if they own it. They use it for patronage purposes and punish those critical of them by depriving them of communal land rights.

These days, it is not uncommon to hear Ghanaians announce proudly that Ghana is a “middle income country” (MIC). I must admit that I do not know what it means to live in a so-called MIC.