Our everyday economics includes scarcity, tradeoffs, cost, sustainability, hyperinflation, gender issues, externalities, African development, human capital.…
Electrification Insight From a Stunning NASA Map
African development continues to be constrained by problems with electricity generation and access to electricity that affect productivity and mobility.…
Bedtime Stories… About the Economy.
From statistics and a satellite image of the world at night, we can see that developing countries lack the electrification they need for economic growth.…
Understanding African Development Through Stories and Stats
By combining stories from Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah and statistics, we can create a more realistic picture of African development.…
Seeing Why African Development Is So Tough To Get Started
I just finished and do recommend The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty. Written by a Vanity Fair journalist, the book is a good read. On one level, The Idealist is about a dynamic e…
Why Would the Nigerian GDP Double Overnight?
We might have to say BRINC rather than BRICS. As a developing nation with the highest GDP in Africa, South Africa has been the “S” in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Now though, Nige…
Figuring Out African Development
In Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah, we meet Ifemelu and Obinze. Representative of Nigeria’s upper class, they are a part of a story that takes the reader to Princeton, Yale, Philadelphia, …
Misleading Statistics: African Development and Beyond
During a Bloomberg Radio interview, economist Charles Wheelan suggested that the precision of risk models lured investors into thinking certain mortgage-related securities were safe investments. Inves…
African Development: Is Poverty Diminishing?
How to assess African poverty? The Afrobarometer provides some answers that generated several perplexing questions. The African Development Bank tells us that growth rates for many African nations hav…