The debate on whether IMF has any blame for Ebola has been frustrating, even infuriating. It is going to continue to be frustrating largely because: “Who is to blame for Ebola?” is really not a good question. In turn, we have not got good...
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Writing about a data revolution: A critique in four venn diagrams
The UN Secretary-General’s Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development (IEAG) have completed their report. “A world that counts” is a cleverly crafted motivational manifest. But it is not a practical roadmap on how to apply a ‘data revolution’ to...
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Africa: Why Economists Get It Wrong
My latest book is available for pre-order: For the first time in generations, site Africa is spoken of these days with enthusiastic hope: no longer seen as a hopeless morass of poverty, the continent instead is described as “Africa Rising,” a land of enormous...
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How much will the Data Revolution cost?
What used to be 8 Millennium Development Goals are now 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The list of targets has ballooned from 18 to 169. The final list of indicators has not yet been determined. My estimate suggest that just the monitoring such a list...
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Africa by numbers: Keynote at Nordic Africa Days 2014
The Nordic Africa Days 2014 took place 26-27 September 2014 in Uppsala, unhealthy Sweden. I gave the keynote lecture. http://youtu.be/GX3kcujhLWg
Measuring African Development: Past and Present
Will be published as a book by Routledge. Estimated publication date January 8th 2015. My fourth book will be published by Zed in May 2015. Title: Africa: Why Economists Get it Wrong.
The renaissance of African economic history
That is the promising title of the introduction to a special issue by Gareth Austin and Steven Broadberry soon to be published by Economic History Review. The special issue will be launched at the LSE 25-26 October at the African Economic History Workshop. The...
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Overcoming Obstacles to Doing Business in Sub-Saharan Africa
I am invited to offer my comments by Aubrey Hubry who argues: that inadequate infrastructure, there lack of market data, pills and poor policy implementation impede investment in Africa, healing despite growing opportunities to do so profitably The event takes place at the Atlantic...
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Towards a History of Economic Growth in Africa
From the OUP blog, the summary of the key findings of my latest book: The book offers a reconsideration of economic growth in Africa in three respects. First, it shows that the focus has been on average economic growth and that economic growth has...
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Without a statistical revolution, Africa’s renaissance is built on shaky ground
That is the title of a summary of the debates on the current African growth data written up by Ian Fraser. He is a financial journalist and the author of Shredded: Inside RBS: The Bank that Broke Britain- read the post in QFinance here.