Showing posts for "Sub-Saharan Africa"
A view is seen of the Nigeria stock exchange building in the central business district in Lagos, April 10, 2013 (Akintunde Akinleye/Courtesy Reuters).
The African growth story continues as investors pour into Africa. Investment is booming and interest in the continent is surging as capital seeks regions still able to flourish despite the broader global economy’s fight to return to robust—or at least decent—health.
Plaintiff Esther Kiobel (L) joins a protest against Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on October 1, 2012 (Gary Cameron/Courtesy Reuters).
On Tuesday the Supreme Court ruled that victims of torture, arbitrary executions, and other human rights abuses in foreign countries could not seek justice in U.S. courts. The ruling in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum halted a widely watched case brought by a group of Nigerians, which alleged that in the 1990s Shell Oil was complicit in the torture and murder of protesters at the company’s operations in the impoverished but oil rich Ogoni region. The Supreme Court held unanimously that the “presumption against extraterritoriality” applies to Alien Tort Statute cases, meaning that foreigners cannot use U.S. courts to seek justice against foreigners for crimes committed on the soil and in the territory of foreign nations.
In a CFR meeting this week, Helen Clark, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, discussed the newly released 2013 Human Development Report and trends in global development. Among the topics was Africa’s economic growth. As Clark argued: Read more »
A Malawian man sits on a bicycle outside a Chinese owned shop in Salima, a dusty town of 40,000 people near the shores of Lake Malawi, August 21, 2012 (Courtesy Reuters).
In a recent interview, Goldman Sachs’ Jim O’Neill, whose pen gave birth to the concept of the BRICs—the constellation of emerging economic powers Brazil, Russia, India, and China (and now including South Africa)—said the countries’ combined growth had “exceeded all expectations.” Noted O’Neill, “in slightly over a decade the group’s GDP has grown from approximately $3 billion to $13 billion. The BRIC countries have the potential to avert a global recession and to grow faster than the rest of the world and to pull all of us along with them as a (growth) engine.”
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chinese President Xi Jinping, South African President Jacob Zuma, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, and Russian President Vladimir Putin pose for a family photograph during the fifth BRICS Summit in Durban, South Africa, March 27, 2013 (Rogan Ward/Courtesy Reuters).
In South Africa this week a group of emerging nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa itself, known as the BRICs (the moniker given by Goldman Sachs in 2001), gathered to launch their own development bank. The New York Times called the move “a direct challenge to the dominance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.”
This graph shows actual and estimated totals of official development assistance and other financial flows to the developing world from China, the United States, and traditional donor countries (Courtesy Dalberg Global Development Advisors).
Emerging Voices features regular contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is from Paul Callan, Jasmin Blak, and Andria Thomas of Dalberg Global Development Advisors. Callan is Dalberg’s Global Operating Partner and leads the firm’s Strategy and Performance practice; Blak and Thomas are based in Dalberg’s Washington, DC, office. In the article, they analyze China’s foreign aid and investment in the developing world and advocate more accurate reporting to enable better comparisons of Chinese financial flows to those from traditional donor countries.
U.S. President Barack Obama addresses the Ghanaian Parliament at the Accra International Conference Center in Accra, July 11, 2009 (Jim Young/Courtesy Reuters).
On his blog this week, CFR senior fellow John Campbell analyzed a proposed new strategy for U.S. policy toward Africa. As he writes: Read more »
Somali government soldiers inspect the scene of an explosion at a restaurant at the Lido beach in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, March 1, 2013 (Omar Faruk/Courtesy Reuters).
On his blog this week, CFR senior fellow John Campbell reviewed a new report on U.S. policy toward failing states. As Campbell explains: Read more »
A red sign "We must retaliate" is displayed next to an upended car at the entrance of Shangpu village, in China's southern Guangdong province on March 5, 2013 (James Pomfret/Courtesy Reuters).
Counter-intuitively, economic growth (a prerequisite for reducing poverty in the world’s poorest countries) and the well-being of the worst-off and most vulnerable populations are often at odds in the developing world. This tension between poverty, equity, and economic growth is most visibly salient in disputes over land—a key resource for the food security and livelihoods of the poor, but also an essential resource for growth-enhancing investments in energy production and industrial manufacturing. Simmering land disputes that pit growth against equity roil just beneath the surface in many countries; just this past week, these conflicts have boiled over for different reasons across continents, from Kenya to China to Myanmar.
Students of SIMAD University attend their graduation ceremony, along with over 600 other students, in Mogadishu on November 29, 2012 (Omar Faruk/Courtesy Reuters).
Emerging Voices features regular contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is from Leonard Wantchekon, founder of the African School of Economics and professor at Princeton. He discusses his efforts to build a world-class university to train African scholars and practitioners in Benin.
The Development Channel highlights big debates, promising approaches, and new research and thinkers addressing opportunity and exclusion in the global economy.
For more on what the United States and others can do to foster open, prosperous, and stable societies, visit CSM&D.
In this guest post, my colleague Rachel Vogelstein analyzes the issue of child marriage and its implications for U.S. policy…
In spite of the global economic turbulence of recent years, many countries in the global south are experiencing rapid growth….
As my colleague Isobel Coleman wrote last week, Saudi Arabia has just leaped a small hurdle towards gender equality: announcing…
The African growth story continues as investors pour into Africa. Investment is booming and interest in the continent is surging…
Emerging Voices features regular contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article…
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