Articles
Trash can
Lagos’s garbage entrepreneurs are cleaning up. Adeyemi Adelekan explains. While growing up in a small suburban community in Lagos state, I was accustomed to hearing people with carts and sacks
Hidden in plain sight
Alan Freeman interprets the art of deft manipulation of fact used in painting an unrealistically assuring, yet remarkably convincing picture of international inequality. In his 1997 book, The Demon-Haunted World:
Impoverished economics? Unpacking the economics Nobel Prize
When the world is facing large systemic crises, Ingrid Kvangraven asks why is the economics profession celebrating small technical fixes? This week it was announced that Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo
Hardcore Peripheries
Ingrid Kvangraven, Farwa Sial and Carolina Alves explore the relevance of dependency theory today. Why are some countries rich and some poor? Why is it difficult – seemingly impossible –
All is revealed
Alessandra Mezzadri explains how productivity barely covers anything in fast fashion prices. In April this year, the UK multi-channel retail brand Missguided advertised the sale of a £1 bikini. It
Where the truth lies
Capitalism has brought us full circle to a place that looks a lot like where we stood just before the crash in 2007. Sameer Dossani says the way forward is
A sense of insecurity
The growing push for using securitisation markets for development finance is fraught with multiple dangers ahead. Rick Rowden sounds a warning. The international development finance club has been increasingly experimenting with various types
Sustainable development in Costa Rica: how real is it?
Costa Rica: a mirage of sustainability? A focus on sustainable development has shown some success in Costa Rica but its credibility is undermined by persistent economic inequality and widespread environmental
Land reform and dispossession in Africa
How handing out titles to the poor can make the rich richer. By Howard Stein, Ann Arbor, Faustin Maganga, Rie Odgaard and Kelly Askew. There was a time when
The most remarkable rejection of free trade you’ve never heard of
Africans are insisting on actual economic development which is leaving European trade negotiators exasperated. Rick Rowden explains why their stand is historic and right. In one of the most under-reported
News
Columns
The Dawning of the Age of Acquisitiveness
In 1969, I was seven years old and largely oblivious to the historical events happening around the world. Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, half a million people came to
Development Economics: The Loaded Question
Discussing global income inequality in classrooms full of rich kids leads to pencil cases at dawn. Nigella Vigoroso-Heck tells a tale of development economics. In 2018 Oxfam horrified us all
Interviews
Why Not Default?: The Political Economy of Sovereign Debt
From Publisher: The European debt crisis has rekindled long-standing debates about the power of finance and the fraught relationship between capitalism and democracy in a globalized world. Why Not Default?
Over tea
In a new series of interviews, we talk to Mwangi wa Gĩthĩnji about economic innovations in Africa. In our first interview Mwangi talks about the Kenyan Tea Development Authority established
A World Away
Economics training in Africa has long been funded by the World Bank so it keeps to the narrow track of mainstream economics – as do the economic policies in Africa.
Event Recordings
Are some countries destined to remain underdeveloped?
Since the mid-1990s, development economics has witnessed an explosion in the discourse explaining the poor economic performance in developing countries – especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) – by non-policy
Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business
Millions of people work, live, and travel in high-risk countries; very few are kidnapped and, of those that are, almost all come home safely – how can this be? Anja