13-Nov-2009 - In Africa, extreme poverty is estimated to touch over 50% of the population, with a tripling of headcount in urban areas. Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa is in the World Bank's lowest income category of less than $765 Gross National Income (GNI) per person per year. Some of the worst are with just $90 GNI per person. Even middle income countries like Gabon and Botswana have sizeable sections of the population living in poverty.
13-Nov-2009 - La Conférence économique africaine a été une opportunité pour les experts et décideurs politiques de passer en revue les principaux problèmes du développement en Afrique. Au cours de la dernière session présidée par Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, directeur exécutif de Commonwealth Telecommunication Organisation, M Pierre Jacquet, chef économiste, Agence francaise de developpement, M. Yaw Nyarko, New York University et M. Ambroise Kone, conseiller spécial du Gouverneur de la BECEAO, ont presenté divers sujets autour de la problématique du développement...
13-Nov-2009 - Ethiopia’s disease burden is one of the highest in Africa. Life expectancy at birth is close to 40 years and improved little over the years. Close to 50% of children are stunted and killer diseases such as tuberculosis are on the rise. The country spends about 5% of its GDP on health related services but with negligible impact due to very low GDP.
13-Nov-2009 - Addis Ababa, 13 November 2009 – The 2009 African Economic Conference (ECA) ended on Friday 13 November in Addis Ababa, where Africa’s prominent researchers, policy makers and development partners brainstormed on various development challenges facing the continent.
13-Nov-2009 - « Dans le contexte de cette crise financière internationale, les ressources financières internationales vers l’Afrique devraient continuer d’être affectées sans conditionnalités. Il s’agit notamment des investissements directs étrangers, des ressources que nous recevons sous forme d’aide, aux transferts des africains de l’étranger et les ressources financières que nous recevons sur nos exportations ».
13-Nov-2009 - Migrant remittances were also the focus of the African Economic Conference that is taking place in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. Remittances play a key role in boosting development efforts on the continent. With the financial crisis still affecting many economies in the world, it is likely that the continent’s development efforts will continue to suffer due to declines in Diaspora remittances.
13-Nov-2009 - Addis Ababa, 13 November 2009 – The timely and innovative actions taken by the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) actually helped to minimize the damage caused by the glbal economic and financial crisis on Africa economies, the AfDB President, Donald Kaberuka has said.
12-Nov-2009 - Addis-Ababa, 12 November 2009 – Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, officially opened the 2009 African Economic Conference (AEC) on Thursday in Addis Ababa, where he tasked African economists and policy-makers to consider redesigning the continent’s development trajectory for sustainable growth and development.
“We need to design strategies that would promote an effective global response to climate change, including adequate funding for adaptation by African countries,” he said.
12-Nov-2009 - The second African Water Week held in Johannesburg under the theme “Carrying forward the commitments of the Sharm El Sheikh AU summit on Water and Sanitation: A Sprint to the finish” has ended. This theme underscores the realities of Africa’s water security and sanitation and the urgency of the need to implement those key commitments made by the political leadership in accelerating progress towards the achievements of the MDGs and the African Water Vision and Framework for Action targets for water and sanitation.
12-Nov-2009 - Multilateral Development Banks say five million deaths, 50 million injuries could be avoided
WASHINGTON, November 11, 2009 – Seven Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) today issued a joint statement outlining a broad package of measures that each would implement in order to reduce an anticipated and alarming rise in the number of road fatalities and casualties in developing countries.
12-Nov-2009 - African countries require significant levels of capital investment to help them stay on track regarding the attainment of MDGs, said a study titled: Impact of FDI on Poverty Reduction in Africa: Are there Regional Differences?, presented at the AEC by Gaston Gohou, principal economist at the AfDB, and Issouf Soumare, associate professor at Laval University in Québec, Canada.
12-Nov-2009 - Mauritius is so small that wherever you are in the country you are always so close to the port. While in the fashionable talks of the grave issue of climate change this seems like a premonitory statement, it was actually stated as the opportunity the country offers to investors desiring to go there. Vinaye Anchaz, from the University of Mauritius, who presented a paper titled: “David versus Goliath: Mauritius facing up to China”, was speaking of how absurd it was for investors in his country to ask for plots of land close to the ports.
12-Nov-2009 - The current global financial crisis that originated in the collapse in the market for sub-prime mortgages in the United States in 2007 initially did not hit Africa directly. The crisis also had little impact on the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) financial systems because the financial sector in Africa remains shallow, uncompetitive and weakly integrated into the global markets.
12-Nov-2009 - Tunis, 12 November 2009 – Aid, in the form of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and other forms of charities channelled to Africa from the developed world have come under severe criticism in recent times.
Zambian-born Economist, Dambisa Moyo, for instance, asserts that aid to African nations was not just ineffective, but was worse than no aid. In her book, titled “Dead Aid”, Ms. Moyo argues that charity from Western nations cripples African governments by fostering dependency and corruption without requiring positive change.
12-Nov-2009 - Natural resource endowment offer great opportunities for achieving high levels of growth and development if properly managed. However, in the case of African countries, it is not clear whether resource-rich countries have been able to take full advantage of their potential wealth to promote development. In fact it appears that they have often been outperformed by their resource-poor counterparts in this regard.
12-Nov-2009 - The creation of an Africa wide free trade area (FTA) is very challenging and should draw on the experiences of the three economic communities on the continent and lessons learned from the failed free trade area of the Americas (FTAA), said Tsidio Disenyana, deputy head of the development of the South African Institute of International Affairs Trade Programme.
12-Nov-2009 - As part of the African Economic Conference, some 150 participants met on Wednesday, November 11, 2009, at the UN Conference center in Addis-Ababa, where they listened to a presentation on: “Impact of Foreign Direct investment (FDI) on Poverty Reduction in Africa: Are there regional differences?”
The paper, which was co-authored by the AfDB’s Results and Quality Assurance Department (ORQR) Principal Economist, Gaston Gohou and Laval University Professor, Issouf Soumaré, attempted to assess the impact of FDI on welfare across Africa.
12-Nov-2009 - The topic of Poverty and Inequality was tackled by a group of researchers and economists. “Growth, Poverty and Inequality in Ethiopia: Which Way for Pro-Poor Growth?” was the title of the first presentation by Alemayehu Geda, Abebe Shimeles, and John Weeks. They discussed mechanisms and conditions by which economic growth translated into poverty reduction.
11-Nov-2009 - A joint AfDB-UNECA press conference took place on Wednesday, November 11, 2009, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as part of activities of the African economic conference that is being held on the theme: “Fostering Development in an Era of Financial Economic and crises”.
Speaking during the press conference, the AfDB research division manager, Abdul Kamara, said Africa was expected to be insulated from the global financial crisis given that its economy had not been fully integrated into the global economy. But the reality is different today.
11-Nov-2009 - The AEC session on the global financial crisis on Wednesday, November 11, 2009, was marked by a measured presentation from Paul Collier, Professor of Economics, and Director for the Centre for the Study of African Economies at The University of Oxford.
