Economics

The purported “new agenda” for Africa began with a trip to Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia by Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion in November of 2016

The concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands has been at the center of increased political contestation and media attention in recent years.

The middle classes in the global South gained growing attention since the turn of the century mainly through their rapid ascendancy in the Asian emerging economies.

Donald Trump’s election as US President is likely to make the world’s biggest economy more inward-looking, more protectionist and acting more unilaterally in global affairs.

I am no fan of the market economy, and I have been so for many years. However in the last few years, with more learning and understanding, I came to the conclusion that, while still no fan of the market economy, I don't have an ideological problem with the market.

In a time of great expectations and great contestations between and within societies at large, there seem to be as many things keeping people apart as those that bind them together.

A new study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) shows how trade misinvoicing in some commodity-based African countries caused these countries to lose as much as 67% of income from their exports.

For decades African countries have been forced by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to implement neoliberal policies, including opening their markets to foreign competition, reducing the role of the state in providing basic services and abolishing subsidies to the poor. 

When things fall apart, they don’t do so by accident. There are underlying deeper historical and civilizational forces. No civilization has existed for ever.

First, the appalling numbers: South Africa’s ‘current account deficit’ fell to a dangerous -5% of GDP because the ‘balance of payments’ (mainly profit outflows) suffered rapid decay; the other component of the current account, the trade deficit – i.e., imports minus exports – is trivial in compar