The data we collect can have a male bias. Where are we going? To measuring the work that women do in low income nations. Evidence of Male Bias Ask someone in a developed economy about his or her job a…
The World’s First Drone Port
If the first drone airport is built in Rwanda, they will have achieved a transportation infrastructure leap and eliminated the need for expensive roads.…
The World's Sanitation Gap
A production possibilities graph can display the land, labor and capital underutilization that inadequate sanitation creates and indicate a constrained GDP.…
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.…
India's Height Mystery
Long assumed to have a direct relationship, the connection between height and GDP becomes more complex when we compare India and Africa.…
How To Cope With (Water) Stress
Being water stressed means you are unusually vulnerable to a water shortage. Sort of like a household where one emergency can push it over the edge because it spends all it earns, so too with most wat…
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, …
Diminishing the Worldwide Energy Gap
Last summer, President Obama announced a $7 billion Power Africa initiative that targets sub-Saharan Africa. Its goal is to create the infrastructure that will extend electricity to more than 20 mill…
Land, Labor and Capital: 18th and 21st Century Solar Power
In one of his farm journals, Thomas Jefferson displays the importance of the sun. Just because the length of the workday is determined by daylight, one half more wool was spun during July than in Janu…
GDP Statistics: Are African GDPs Accurate?
With most people debating the validity of GDP statistics as a yardstick of well-being, I was surprised to hear a completely different conclusion in an econtalk podcast. Before even considering validit…