Economic Growth

Africa Must Prioritise Upskilling its Unemployed Youth, Development Bank Urges

Africa’s inability to produce adequate skills is negatively impacting its economic growth.

Opinion: Address Development and Climate Crises Together

The world today faces a crisis of climate and a crisis of development. Both are consequences of the nature of growth of the world economy over the last two centuries, especially during the recent period.

Opinion: Economic Slowdown Threatening Progress

Slower economic growth since 2008, and especially with the commodity price collapse since the end of last year, threatens to reverse the exceptional half-decade before the financial crash when growth in the South stayed ahead of the North. From 2002, many developing countries – including some of the poorest– had been growing much faster after a quarter century of stagnation in Africa, for example.

Opinion: Sub-Saharan Africa, Addis and Paris

After the turn of the century, growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) picked up again after a quarter century of near stagnation for most, mainly due to increased world demand for minerals and other natural resources.

Opinion: Journey Towards an African Taxation Renaissance

Africa is known as the ‘paradox of plenty’. How can a continent so rich in natural resources be so poor?

Africa Primed to Take Advantage of Internet Opportunity

There has been robust growth in Internet access and usage over the past few years and Africa is now primed to take advantage of the social and economic opportunities that Internet can bring to people across the continent, according to Kathy Brown, President and CEO of the Internet Society.

Opinion: Paying Real Tribute to All Victims of War and Conflict

The international community will have a great opportunity to jointly advance on the world peace agenda when a United Nations working group established to negotiate a draft U.N. resolution on the right to peace meets from Apr. 20 to 24 in Geneva.

OPINION: Patent Examination and Legal Fictions: How Rights are Created on Feet of Clay

Industry’s demands and political pressures exerted by developed countries to expand and strengthen patent protection worldwide have been based on the argument that patents promote innovation and thereby contribute to achieve social, political and economic well-being, independently of the level of development of the country where they are granted and enforced.

Good Harvest Fails to Dent Rising Hunger in Zimbabwe

With agriculture as one of the drivers of economic growth, Zimbabwe needs to invest in the livelihoods of smallholder farmers who keep the country fed, experts say.

Kenya’s Economy Sees Growth at Top But No ‘Trickle-Down’

David Kamau is a small-scale maize farmer in Nyeri, Central Kenya, some 153 kms from the capital Nairobi. He recently diversified into carrot farming but is still not making a profit.

UNIDO Development Initiative Gains Momentum in ACP Nations

The inclusive and sustainable industrial development (ISID) initiative of the U.N. Industrial Development Organisation to promote industrial development for poverty reduction, inclusive globalisation and environmental sustainability is gaining momentum in the countries of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group. 

Afghan Concern Over Western Disengagement

The U.S./NATO International Security Assistance Force Joint Command lowered its flag for the last time in Afghanistan on Dec. 8, after 13 years. The ISAF mission officially ends on Dec. 31, and will be replaced on Jan. 1, 2015 by “Resolute Support”, a new, narrow-mandate mission to train, advise and assist the Afghan National Security Forces.

Will Myanmar’s ‘Triple Transition’ Help Eradicate Crushing Poverty?

Myanmar is never out of the news for long. This has been the case since a popular uprising challenged military rule in 1988. For over two decades, the country was featured in mainstream media primarily as one unable to cope with its own internal contradictions, a nation crippled by military rule.

Down With Sustainable Development! Long Live Convivial Degrowth!

For anyone who recently attended the Fourth International Conference on Degrowth in Leipzig, Germany, listening in on conference talk, surrounded by the ecologically savvy, one quickly noticed that no one was singing the praises of sustainable development.

Kenya on the Right Economic Path But Challenges Abound

Each year on Dec. 10, Lucy Mwende and her two children hop aboard a night bus and travel to the white sandy beaches and warm waters of Kenya’s Indian Ocean, some 441 km from the capital, Nairobi.

UNIDO Comes a Long Way

The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has come a long way since 1997, when it faced the risk of closure in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War.

UNIDO Forum Expresses Cautious Optimism on Ethiopia’s Economic Strides

With annual economic growth rates of over 10 percent and attractive investment conditions due to low infrastructural and labour costs, Ethiopia is eagerly trying to rise from the status of low-income to middle-income country in the next 10 years.

OPINION: Europe is Positioning Itself Outside the International Race

The new European Commission looks more like an experiment in balancing opposite forces than an institution that is run by some kind of governance. It will probably end up being paralysed by internal conflicts, which is the last thing it needs.

Sustaining the Future Through Culture

International experts working in the creative sector are calling for governments to recognise the integral role that culture plays in development and to ensure that culture is a part of the post-2015 United Nations development goals, to be discussed next year.

Only the Crazy and Economists Believe Growth is Endless

From the mid-20th century onwards, economic growth has come to count as a self-evident goal in economic policies and GDP to be seen as the most important index for measuring economic activities.

OPINION: Invest in Young People to Harness Africa’s Demographic Dividend

Different issues will be competing for the attention of different African leaders attending the 69th United Nations General Assembly Special Session on International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Beyond 2014 in New York on Sep 22.

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