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By Erin Wildermuth
6 Jan 2009
The Communications Commission of Kenya gained vast powers over Kenya's media organizations recently as President Kibaki passed the Kenya Communications Amendments Bill 2008. The organization can now control "the time, manner and content of broadcasts." Perhaps more frightening - the Internal Security and the Communication and Information Ministers also have control over media content - placing power directly in Kibaki's government. Media organizations in Kenya are outraged and have issued a joint statement demanding a commitment to freedom of the press. Various meeting have been held between the government and the media throughout the presentation of the new act, but to no avail. The Media Owners Association is now demanding that the Act be suspended before talks continue...

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Obesity in Children

By Erin Wildermuth
15 Dec 2008
Last week a report from University College London warned that the UK would have the highest obesity level in the world by 2012. The British Heart Foundation argues that the government needs to be involved...

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Does a New Administration Mean a New Course for the War on Drugs?

By Brian Kennedy
1 Dec 2008
As the administration of George W. Bush fades into the sunset and Barrack Obama’s team gears up to take over the reins, great shifts are expected in American policies. However, one area that will not see the earth shaking changes that “The One” has promised is the War on Drugs. President-Elect Obama seems to want to continue business as usual...

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South African Moral Hypocrisy

By Brian Kennedy
28 Nov 2008
A recent article in the Economist exposes the clear inconsistencies in ANC rhetoric and South African foreign policy. The Rainbow Nation has strayed from Nelson Mandela’s idealistic pronouncement that “human rights will be the light that guides our foreign affairs.” Over the last fourteen years, the nation has steadily grown closer with the world’s most brutal regimes including: Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, Qaddafi’s Libya, Fidel Castro’s Cuba, the murderous regime of al-Bashir in the Sudan, as well as China and Russia’s authoritarian regimes. The most glaring South African subversion of western and democratic interests have been its perpetuation of Robert Mugabe’s police state and the Rainbow Nation’s attempt to block the International Criminal Court prosecution of Omar al-Bashir for his genocide in Darfur...

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Tax Hikes in Britain

By Erin Wildermuth
24 Nov 2008
Alistair Darling’s new plan to fund Britain’s recession package would raise income tax on the rich by 5p – from 44p on the pound to 45p. Notably this increase will only amount to about £2bn whereas government loans may total closer to £100bn next year. Of course, the answer could be to raise taxes on the rich further. John McDonnell of the Labour Party isn’t satisfied. He would much prefer to see a tax of 50 percent. Yes, that would mean that a full half of all earnings of the rich would be transferred to the state. Let us be honest, Mr...

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July 03, 2009

Feature Article: Music, money and growth

By Franklin Cudjoe, Mark Schultz, Alec van Gelder
24 Jun 2009

African music is loved all over the world but African musicians live in poverty: the few stars record and publish abroad. These authors explain how Africans can develop that talent into commercial success as the impoverished city of Nashville did in the 1920s, becoming a musical and economic dynamo.

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Health

Drug-fuelled dreams of lcoal production

By Franklin Cudjoe
26 May 2009
Local production of drugs is a long-standing slogan in the aid industry and in many individual countries and has now been taken up by the African Union. But its superficial attraction hides vested interests, expensive subsidies and dangers to quality.

UN Disarms Weapon of Malarial Destruction

By Roger Bate
17 May 2009
DDT is much-demonised by superstitious Westerners but it has saved millions of lives all over the world (including the USA and Europe) and continues to save lives in Africa. But not for much longer: the WHO's reluctant acceptance of DDT in 2006 has been reversed in favour of a range of human experiments using poor people as guinea-pigs.

Fueling waste and corruption: U.S. aid hurts poor more than helps

By Philip Stevens
17 May 2009
President Obama has revamped the Bush policy of heath aid to poor countries by widening its scope beyond AIDS to all diseases: it looks like a great idea but it is full of unintended consequences.

Environment

Dangers of disaster policy

By Indur Goklany
23 Jun 2009
Plans to alter the climate would do more harm to the poor than climate catastrophes: this author shows how climate risk is mitigated by increasing prosperity (look at Dutch dykes in a country which is partly below sea-level), not by trying to change the weather. Impoverishing the rich to pay for climate alteration will also impoverish the poor by reducing global economic activity.

Bulldozers can't stop slums

By Caroline Boin
4 Jun 2009
Far from the red carpet of the Oscars, the child stars of the hit-film "Slumdog Millionaire" have had their dwellings destroyed by the Indian authorities. But slums are nothing that Danny Boyle's charity, bulldozers, large wads of cash or big schemes can solve: only property rights can do that.

Idle Speculation On Hunger

By Douglas Southgate
28 Apr 2009
The G-8's belated attempt in late April to address the last two years' food crisis included everyone's favourite bogey-man, speculators. The trouble is they are not the problem: governments are the problem, restricting their own farmers and restricting trade - and pushing up prices.

Technology

The real threat to European R&D

By Alec van Gelder
5 Aug 2007
It is governments, who undermine property rights and drive investment and business out of Europe, that are to blame for the falling levels and quality of European R&D, not new competition from the fast-growng countries of Asia.

Africa needs its own Green Revolution

By Douglas Southgate
25 Jul 2007
Agricultural technologies that could save millions of lives are being held back from Africans because of the opposition of environmental NGOs and other interest groups.

Net loss

By Alec van Gelder
5 Apr 2007
In spite of its harmless name, "net neutrality" would damage important innovation and hamper investment into broadband across Europe and possibly elsewhere.

Trade & Development

Yes, Zimbabwe can

By Temba A. Nolutshungu
17 Jun 2009
President Obama’s offer of AIDS relief to Zimbabwe is conditional on it not going anywhere near the pockets of Mugabe and his gang. But the good news is that there are many things Zimbabweans can do themselves to restore prosperity, even with Robert Mugabe still at the helm: all is not lost, despite the horrors of recent years...

Free Trade: Smash the Regional Barriers

By Michael Cook
3 Apr 2009
With all eyes on the G20's broken pledges to reject protectionism, it is worth remembering that African countries have more to gain in trade from opening their borders to their neighbours, boosting trade and removing a rich source of corruption. This writer looks beyond the G20 meeting to the African trade blocs meeting in Lusaka in early April where governments could do something for their own people.

How to make a depression Great

By Thompson Ayodele
1 Apr 2009
This analyst argues against protectionism from the perspective of the countries who have suffered most from it: Africa's human experiments in economics sound a terrible warning.

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Feature Article: Music, money and growth