Author Archive
Thursday, December 7th, 2006
Trade: rich countries’ responsibilities*
The discussion of how economic growth can help Africans out of poverty has often become a row between those who focus on the steps Africans and their governments can take to improve growth rates, and those who focus on the steps rich countries must take. As we saw last time, the Report of the Commission [...]
No Comments » - Posted in The Main Proposals by Rav Casley Gera
Saturday, November 25th, 2006
An urgent appeal from Rav Casley Gera
Faithful reader,
First, let me take the opportunity to thank you for your support over the first few weeks of this project. Your comments, whether complimentary or critical, are invaluable. Even the ones that offer me viagra.
Now, however, I turn to you in dire need of further assistance.
No Comments » - Posted in Researcher's Log by Rav Casley Gera
Saturday, November 25th, 2006
Commission to Mars*
The conversation on how to reduce Africa’s poverty problem is fraught with disagreements. Aid: essential lifeline or dictator’s delight? But one thing which almost everyone agrees on is the importance of economic growth.1 Growth, the argument goes, means a “larger pie” to feed everyone with. Jeffrey Sachs (who I’ll go back to soon, I promise) [...]
No Comments » - Posted in The Main Proposals by Rav Casley Gera
Tuesday, November 21st, 2006
Commission: Impossible 3 - The One No One Watched
News coverage of Africa isn’t just about starvation, disease and corruption. It’s also about war - or, as modern policy-speak seems to have labelled it, Conflict. Many Africans are sick of the continent being associated with non-stop war, just like they’re sick of it being associated with non-stop starvation and misery. But just as, despite [...]
No Comments » - Posted in The Main Proposals by Rav Casley Gera
Saturday, November 18th, 2006
Commission: Impossible 2
Criticisms of Africa’s governance have long been a staple of many of the voices opposed to aid and debt relief. Africa, they say, is poor because it’s mismanaged. We shouldn’t throw any more good money after bad until they improve. So it’s interesting that the Report of the Commission for Africa, rather than simply leaping [...]
No Comments » - Posted in The Main Proposals by Rav Casley Gera
Sunday, November 12th, 2006
Fantastic stats: the answers!
Missed the questions?
No Comments » - Posted in The Main Proposals by Rav Casley Gera
Sunday, November 12th, 2006
Fantastic stats
The Africa Commission Report is peppered with some of the most eye-catching statistics about Africa’s development plight. Now, we all know out-of-context statistics aren’t to be trusted. But they sound really good when you drop them into conversations.
To make things interesting I’ve jumbled them up. Can you match the figure to the fact?
2 Comments » - Posted in The Main Proposals by Rav Casley Gera
Sunday, November 12th, 2006
Commission Impossible?
The Commission for Africa (which everyone calls the Africa Commission) was set up in early 2004 to study the “Africa problem” in detail and come up with proposals for the UK’s presidency of the G8. Its report, entitled Our Common Interest, was published in book form and online in early 2005.*
Because the publicity blitz surrounding [...]
No Comments » - Posted in The Main Proposals by Rav Casley Gera
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006
Paging Dr. Sachs
In chapters one and two of The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs outlines the ladder of economic development that poor countries must climb in order to bring their people out of poverty. As elegant as his summary is, it’s nothing that you couldn’t find in an economics textbook. In chapter three, he details the obstacles [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in The Main Proposals by Rav Casley Gera
Monday, October 23rd, 2006
Sachs, on sustainability, in St. Paul’s
Ah, St. Paul’s Cathedral! Icon of old London, shrine to the survival of the human spirit, blah blah. What better place to hear Jeffrey Sachs, celebrity economist, brain of the Make Poverty History campaign, and all-round Bringer of Solutions to Difficult Problems (oh yes, and Chairman of Columbia University’s Earth Institute), explain to us the [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Researcher's Log by Rav Casley Gera
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006
Let’s talk about Sachs
In the introductory chapters of his book The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs lays out a brief history of economic development since the Industrial Revolution, and argues that the gap between the richest and poorest countries that now exists stems from the failure of poor countries to benefit fully from that process. In the third [...]
No Comments » - Posted in The Main Proposals by Rav Casley Gera
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006
The World According to Sachs
Jeffrey Sachs is known as an advocate of aid and debt cancellation - a cause he’s championed through the UN’s Millennium Development Project, the Make Poverty History campaign (and its global cousins), and in his own writing. Now, aid and debt cancellation are not, as we know, without their detractors. So when I picked up [...]
No Comments » - Posted in The Main Proposals by Rav Casley Gera
Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
Sachs Appeal*
The Make Poverty History / Live8 furore of 2005 (and MPH’s counterparts around the world, collectively called the Global Call to Action Against Poverty) featured plenty of rock stars, comedians, actors, campaigners, and even a few Starving Africans, arguing and lobbying for action on extreme poverty. But when it came to actual economists, one name [...]
No Comments » - Posted in The Main Proposals by Rav Casley Gera
Thursday, September 14th, 2006
Welcome
I wrote this to be a very professional intro for the site. Then I decided I didn’t like it.
No Comments » - Posted in About the Site by Rav Casley Gera
Monday, August 28th, 2006
A quick geography lesson
“Africa” has become more of a concept than a place in my mind, over the years of famine, civil war, and token coverage of brightly-coloured cultural events in the media. So when I decided to actually look over some of the details of the place, it was a real eye-opener. Geography was always my weak [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Getting Started by Rav Casley Gera
Monday, August 21st, 2006
My brain is tired
Over the last week I’ve read a load of essays on everything from the structure of dictatorial power to the effectiveness of participation methods in poverty measurement. Frankly, I didn’t understand much of it. There was a lot of debate about how many extremely poor people there are, and I’ve written a short essay about [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Getting Started, Researcher's Log by Rav Casley Gera
Sunday, August 20th, 2006
Counting the Poor
Warning: quite long. If preferred, download as a PDF
Any serious conversation about the nature and causes of poverty in Africa, and its reduction, must begin with an attempt to measure the scale of the problem. The Make Poverty History campaign, and the huge wave of debate, campaigning and publicity on the topic that seemed to [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Getting Started by Rav Casley Gera
Wednesday, August 9th, 2006
And this is the news
OK. So I spent an afternoon reading Guardian articles from 2005 about Make Poverty History, The Africa Commission report, and The Future Of Africa. What did I learn? Well, it just increased my sense that there’s massive disagreement about, well, just about all of it. It has, however, given me a slightly better idea of [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Researcher's Log by Rav Casley Gera
Saturday, August 5th, 2006
Down to business
OK. This is going to take some planning. African development is, I’m beginning to realise, quite a big topic. So I think I’m going to do some general reading first, and try to understand what the big issues are. Maybe I’ll start by looking through some of the newspaper coverage from last year.
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