As extreme militant Islamists, inspired by ‘Salifist jihadism’ and nurtured by domestic disaffection with non-inclusive political and economic institutions, reek unspeakable havoc in northeastern and northcentral Nigeria, the country once again emerges on the international scene for the wrong reasons. The militant group that brands itself ‘Boko Haram’ has, since its formation in 2002 in Borno State by Mohammed Yusuf, managed to confirm two sad realities in the country: the Nigerian government’s inability to contain it, and the group’s unconstrained capacity to spill the blood of fellow innocent Africans. The extrajudicial killing of Mr. Yusuf in 2009 by Nigerian security…
Author: CASADE
The months of March, and May, 2014 were particularly exciting for economists, policy makers and development experts in Nigeria. For in these months, three impactful international conferences, one featuring two Nobel Laureates in Economics, were held in the country. The Economist’s Nigeria Summit 2014 took the lead in March, then came the International Conference on African Development Issues in May, and in the same week, The World Economic Forum on Africa commenced activities. What makes these conferences important is underwritten, not so much by the excitement they generated, but by the promise they held for sustained economic growth in the…
Godwin Haruna. Even as the whereabouts of the 219 schoolgirls abducted from the Government Secondary School Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria remains unknown, yet another round of bizarre abductions by the insurgent Boko Haram group has taken place. More than 185 women and children have been reportedly kidnapped in Gumsuri, close to Chibok where the insurgents took away the missing schoolgirls about eight months ago. According to agency reports, the insurgents kidnapped at least 185 women and children, and killed 32 people in the raid, which happened on Sunday but only filtered out on Thursday due to lack of communication. “They…
César Calderón* Luis Servén* The World Bank JEL Classification: H54, O40, D31, O55 Keywords: Infrastructure, Growth, Income Inequality, Sub-Saharan Africa * We are indebted to Melvin Ayoglu, Alberto Bihar, Markus Eberhardt, Johannes Fedderke, Delfin Go, Anke Hoeffler, Phil Manners, Ngila Mwase, Martin Ravallion, and participants at the CSAE-Oxford University 2008 conference and the World Bank’s 2008 ABCDE conference in Cape Town for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. Any remaining errors are our own responsibility. We thank Rei Odawara for assistance, and Cecilia Briceño, David Cieslikowski, Arnaud Desmarchelier, Antonio Estache, Ana Goicoechea, Tsukasa Hattori, and Tito Yepes…
Reviewed by Professor Uwe Reindhart, Princeton. The causes and economic effects of inequality in income and wealth have long been a focus of economic research. As a series of papers on the topic in this year’s summer issue of The Journal of Economic Perspectives illustrates, the issue is much more complex than might be imagined by the simplistic talking heads on television who seek to reduce each and every issue to “good or bad.” A truly elegant exploration of the topic is offered in a new book, “The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality” by my Princeton…
By Antoine Cerisier. Ha-Joon Chang is a South Korean economist currently teaching at Cambridge University, as well as a follower and friend of Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, whose main areas of interest are development economics and international trade. His books have had considerable impact in the developing world: Rafael Correa, the current Ecuadorian president, cited Dr Chang as his main influence for economic policy. Bad Samaritans was released in 2007 and was Dr Chang’s most successful work to date, receiving numerous accolades from the press and from renowned scholars – including Noam Chomsky and his mentor Joseph Stiglitz. The scourge…
The Council on African Security and Development (CASADE) is a non-profit research-driven collectivity of experts and academics dedicated to a holistic advancement of Africa and its inhabitants. It serves as a reservoir of experts that African ministries, agencies, universities, and international organizations may confidently and readily access for specific projects, guidance, and counsel. Its vision for Africa is multi-faceted: to see an end to ethnic and religious tensions that lead to civil strife, violence and instability with the potential to disable and discourage sustained human and economic development; to bring to an end pervasive hunger and privation that have singularly…
To argue that misappropriation of social resources is the norm in both developed and emerging economies is to state the obvious. And to argue that economic development inevitably takes hold in spite of resource mismanagement by public officials is historically accurate but discounts the fact that such development would have been achieved much sooner would not be so obvious. Advanced Western societies are replete with the latter observation. The long-held view that all manners of bureaucratic corruption are detrimental to efficient resource allocation is factually incorrect, for in instances where bribery of officials would eliminate burdensome bureaucratic red tapes and…