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Blog Post
May 23, 2023
The past year has been challenging and turbulent for many frontier markets in Africa. In 2022, African economies met headwinds of inflation, the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and sovereign debt challenges. This led to a decrease in demand for African goods and services, as well as reduced inve...
Blog Post
May 19, 2023
Many apologies for the unscheduled break in the Links last Friday. It’s long been a point of pride that, excepting planned holidays, I never miss a Friday. Last week’s sudden absence was—to the best of my recollection—the first since the 24th of June, 2016; as the votes were tallied that morning and...
Blog Post
May 05, 2023
There’s something just perfectly British about having local elections just 48 hours before an obscenely wealthy 70-something puts on a hat made from plundered jewels, sits on an ancient bit of granite and becomes King. The local elections are just about as pure a form of democracy as possible, in wh...
Blog Post
April 28, 2023
Earlier this week, my sister sent a message to the family chat which just read “Harry Belafonte”. At first, it hadn’t occurred to me that he might have passed away (surely, he was immortal?), and I just assumed she was randomly thinking about what a genius and a brilliant man he was, so I responded ...
Blog Post
April 21, 2023
John Mortimer’s third autobiography (he was very long-lived; after each one he found he went through a lot of unexpected life, hence the trilogy) opens with the reflection that the marker of elderliness is the moment you realise you cannot put on your own socks. I think the Rubicon of middle-age is ...
Blog Post
April 14, 2023
I’ve been away for the last couple of Fridays, so this week there is an absolute mass of material to get through this week. I’ve been brutal in editing it down: there are probably ten times as many interesting bits of esoteric statistics, development economics and political commentary from the last ...
CGD NOTES
April 06, 2023
Countries continue to bet on Special Economic Zones to improve their industrial prospects, but why? SEZs are a handy and politically expedient instrument of regional and industrial policies, but too often, countries continue to establish zones even though they've ceased to deliver the outcomes they...
Blog Post
March 24, 2023
This week’s edition of The Chronicles of Unpacking is entitled “How much of my lifetime income was spent on all of these books, and why are there never enough shelves?” We’ve been unboxing books over the last four days, and we’re almost finished, but ran out of shelf space some time ago—a few are st...
Blog Post
March 17, 2023
A week into the house move there are definite signs of progress: we have a sofa, which has been thoroughly colonised by my son, who has mastered the art of arranging his four rather small limbs and body in such a fashion as to occupy as large a surface area as possible; the boxes have graduated from...