Is it hypocritical for an aid agency to come to a developing country looking to improve local lives, yet economically discriminate against local staff within their organisation? Or is there a line that separates extremely poor citizens targeted as beneficiaries from the average working citizen? Are their needs, such as equal treatment in the workplace, irrelevant? Perhaps local staff are seen more as tools to implement aid programmes without the expertise to make the big decisions. But local staff have knowledge that cannot be learned at any institution and many are highly educated with years of experience in their field,…
Author: CASADE
Coleen Vogel. When it comes to climate change Africa is in the eye of the storm. This is partly because of human factors – but the continent’s climate also makes it extremely vulnerable. Africa is faced with a number of interlinked challenges. These include land degradation, poverty and climate change. These are referred to as “wicked problems” since they are complex and caused by a number of factors, many of which have global dimensions. In the case of climate change, Africa is vulnerable because it is exposed to damaging climate risks including extreme droughts, flooding and storms. The continent also…
Father Shagbaor F. Wegh. I write this piece with a broken heart, bleeding from the wounds of man’s inhumanity to man. Think of the hundreds of innocent school children murdered recently in the North-East of Nigeria by Boko Haram. With that act, Boko Haram’s assault and devastation on Nigerians has reached Nostradamic proportions. However, I am now writing about another imminent disaster which has been in the making for some years in Benue State. As I write thousands of Tiv people have been driven out of their homes, and have become refugees in their own land. The Tiv in different…
Developing countries are bracing for a major slowdown this year. According to the UN report World Economic Situation and Prospects 2016, their growth will average only 3.8% this year – the lowest since the global financial crisis in 2009 and matched in this century only by the recessionary year of 2001. And what is important to bear in mind is that the slowdown in China and the deep recessions in the Russian Federation and Brazil only explain part of the broad falloff in growth. True, falling demand for natural resources in China – which accounts for nearly half of global…
Boko Haram’s recent pledge of allegiance to ISIS has generated a wave of speculation about its significance. ISIS’s response was to release an audio-tape purporting to welcome the pledge. In the rest of the world one dominant view is that ISIS and the jihadi front is spreading and becoming more organized, which, in turn, has spurred the US government to consider expanding its military actions to include ISIS affiliates. There are, however, good reasons not to read too much into the Boko Haram pledge. It is probable that it will have little or no real practical significance, beyond the initial…
Robtel Neajai Pailey and Silas Kpanan Ayoung Siakor. In front of a collection of sticks, torn plastic sheeting, and broken pieces of harvester zinc held together by taut rope and shiny nails, 63-year-old Francis Selee stands stoic like a statue. When Ebola charged through Liberia, leaving behind more than 4000 dead and nearly 10,000 infected as of March 22, 2015, Selee and his family survived unscathed. Yet, they have had to deal with more pressing existential threats to their livelihoods—before the outbreak, now, and undoubtedly after Liberia is officially declared Ebola-free. From 1970 to 1989, Selee worked for the German-Italian…
PAUL OKUMU. Following ten years of expended time and resources, the United Nations (UN) Peace-building Commission (PBC) is beginning a much-needed makeover. It is, therefore, time to consider not so much how it has done its work, but what has informed this work. In an increasingly volatile and violent world, the review is long overdue. Ten years ago we were concerned about external actors like al-Qaeda, while internally the World Development Report told us to focus on internally driven conflicts. Today we have external actors several times more powerful than al-Qaeda, with a motive that has shifted from conquering…
Gerard Kambou. Growth picked up in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2014, after moderating in 2013, but remained weaker than during the pre-crisis years. It softened around the turn of the year owing to headwinds from the plunge in the price of oil. Sub-Saharan Africa’s oil exporters, which account for nearly half of the region’s aggregate output, have been hit hard by the sharp decline in the price of oil. From June 2014 to January 2015, oil prices fell by nearly 50 percent, and have remained low despite the recent uptick. In response, several of the region’s oil-exporters have revised their 2015…
Drugs, Guns, Criminals, and Gold: the bloodline of terrorist groups. An operation to strengthen border controls along the Abidjan-Lagos corridor has resulted in major seizures of drugs, stolen cars, currency, firearms and fake travel documents, in addition to arrests for migrant smuggling.The 10-day (26 January – 4 February) Operation Adwenpa saw more than 100 officers deployed to ten air and land border control points across five countries ‒ Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo – to conduct additional security checks against INTERPOL’s databases. Two men who were the subject of INTERPOL Red Notices were identified – a Ghanaian national…
By Leonce Ndikumana and James Boyce. In Africa’s Odious Debts, James Boyce and Léonce Ndikumana reveal the shocking fact that, contrary to the popular perception of Africa being a drain on the financial resources of the West, the continent is actually a net creditor to the rest of the world. The extent of capital flight from sub-Saharan Africa is remarkable: more than $700 billion in the past four decades. But Africa’s foreign assets remain private and hidden, while its foreign debts are public, owed by the people of Africa through their governments. Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce reveal the…