Daniel Large. In the wake of China’s Year of Africa in 2006, China–Africa relations are currently the subject of unprecedented attention. However, although those relations are widely covered they are also under-researched. This article offers an introduction to China–Africa relations, covering background to the history and politics of Chinese involvement in the continent and identifying areas of further research. It concludes by calling for the study of China–Africa relations to develop a culture of serious research beyond current ‘dragon in the bush’ preoccupations and so engage a complex subject that is about to become a mainstream issue in African…
Author: CASADE
Danielle Beswick. Civil war and insecurity are widely seen as obstacles to development and threats to international stability, and donors are therefore keen to develop African capacities to manage conflict on the continent. Building the capacity of African militaries is hazardous, however, given their frequent roles in coups, support for authoritarian regimes, and violence against civilians. This article argues that the risks of military capacity building can be assessed more accurately by understanding how national governments view and utilize the military as a policy tool. It demonstrates this using the case of post-genocide Rwanda, a significant contributor to African peacekeeping…
Benjamin Leo And Ross Thoutte. The World Bank Group faces significant operational changes over the near to medium term. More than half of poor countries are projected to graduate from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) concessional assistance over the next 15 years.1 As a result, IDA’s country client base is projected to become dominated by African fragile states. To its credit, the World Bank Group recognizes these coming changes and the unique needs and constraints present in fragile environments. It has publicly expressed a plan to develop an organization-wide strategy tailored specifically for fragile and conflict-affected situations.…
In May 2000, The Economist magazine declared that Africa was “the hopeless continent.” Eleven years later, in 2011, it referred to Africa as “the hopeful continent.” And on October 20, 2012, the magazine stated: “In recent years investors have been piling into Lagos and Nairobi as if they were Frankfurt and Tokyo of old.” Clearly, gloomy skepticism has given way to glowing optimism about Africa, and for good reason—over the past 10 years, many of the economies within Africa are outpacing economies anywhere else in the world. In fact, according to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook released…
Anne Marie Sloth Carlsen. Corruption remains a serious global challenge that impedes development and promotes inequality and injustice. Corruption undermines fundamental human rights, exacerbates poverty, and degrades the environment. It diverts money sorely needed by our societies for health care, education and other essential services. It increases the costs of doing business, distorts markets and impedes economic growth. Every year, developing countries lose up to $1 trillion through government corruption, criminal activity and commercial tax evasion. In Africa alone, an estimated $148 billion is lost annually to corruption. Globally, almost $1 trillion is paid in bribes each year.…
Thomas Pogge. Despite a high and growing global average income, billions of human beings are still condemned to lifelong severe poverty, with all its attendant evils of low life expectancy, social exclusion, ill health, illiteracy, dependency, and effective enslavement. The annual death toll from poverty-related causes is around 18 million, or one-third of all human deaths, which adds up to approximately 270 million deaths since the end of the Cold War.1 This problem is hardly unsolvable, in spite of its magnitude. Though constituting 44 percent of the world’s population, the 2,735 million people the World Bank counts as living below…
Michael Weiss. Reviewed by Steven Negus. A masked militant with a drawn knife, preparing to slaughter a helpless captive: This is how the group that was to become the Islamic State, more commonly known as ISIS, grabbed the world’s attention in 2004. The Islamic State has renamed and reinvented itself many times since then, but it still makes such scenes a staple of its propaganda. “One who previously engaged in jihad knows that it is naught but violence, crudeness, terrorism, deterrence and massacring,” Abu Bakr Naji wrote in “The Management of Savagery,” the group’s key theoretical work. Other forces in…
Daniel Resnick And Nicolas van de Walle. Development scholars and public policy advisors who focus on the effectiveness of foreign aid often look towards Africa as the last main undeveloped region of the world. These researchers are often divided into two groups: those with a focus on how foreign aid affects democracy and governance in Africa – often political scientists – and those who examine economic growth and see it as the key indicator for overall African development – often developmental economists. The economists have often overshadowed the political scientists in mainstream development studies, with Paul Collins, Jeffrey Sachs and…
CONFERMENT OF AWARDS. PAN AFRICAN HUMANITARIAN AWARDS 2015. Prof. John Ifediora, Director/ Editor in Chief, Council on African Security and Development. It is with great pleasure and honour that the members of the distinguished Pan African Humanitarian Awards advisory board write to inform you of your conferment in the 2015 edition of the award. The conferment is based on your outstanding leadership qualities, tireless commitment towards the emancipation of others and your demonstration of excellence and innovation in humanitarian practices and socio-economic development in Africa as an Economic Consultant and also Council Director on African Security and Development. You will…
Martin Ravallion. There is growing support in the rich world for a basic-income guarantee (BIG), in which the government would provide a fixed cash transfer to every adult, poor or not. In 2015, for example, the Swiss will vote on a referendum to introduce a BIG. We have not yet seen a national BIG rolled out, although there are policies in place with similar features. (For example, the US earned-income tax credit, while not strictly a BIG, contains some similarities.) Proponents say it’s an easy way to reduce poverty and inequality; if that’s so, it’s time to think BIG in…