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This week, numerous companies from emerging economies will gather in India to participate in the third annual Growth Net conference, a unique platform focused on promoting business, trade and financial partnerships amongst the countries represented.  South-South cooperation will be the focus of much of Growth Net’s agenda, and a principal topic of interest will be…

President Obama recently announced that approximately 3,000 U.S. troops will deploy to West Africa in an effort to combat the Ebola epidemic, which has struck more than 4,985 people and resulted in over 2,461 deaths.  The U.S. Africa Command will establish its Joint Force Command headquarters in Monrovia, Liberia to coordinate regional assistance to Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal.  The additional health facilities, medical expertise, equipment, and supplies that the U.S. will provide are desperately needed, yet the mission’s effectiveness will depend in part on the United States’ ability to adequately address the underlying governance challenges and social dynamics that are propelling this debilitating virus.

On September 18, the international non-profit IREX sponsored a Washington, D.C. event entitled Ebola in Liberia: The Challenges of Preserving Peace in a Public Crisis.  Panelists in the field of healthcare, media and civil society development, and justice sector reform offered useful observations concerning Liberia’s governance obstacles and their effect on the Ebola outbreak.  The experts highlighted the social realities that have hindered the fight against Ebola and identified potential opportunities for the upcoming U.S. mission to maximize its impact in Liberia.…

Continue Reading Governance Challenges, Social Barriers, and the Upcoming U.S. Mission to Fight Ebola

According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, two out of three sub-Saharan Africans, approximately 600 million people, do not have access to electricity, instead relying on costly, environmentally unfriendly, and unhealthy forms of energy such as diesel generators and kerosene lamps and stoves.  With many sub-Saharan African countries receiving a high number of…

By any measure Ethiopia is experiencing impressive economic growth.  According to IMF data, GDP grew 8.7 percent in 2012, the country’s weakest year since 2009.  In 2010, GDP grew a blistering 12.6 percent, higher than all but a handful of countries worldwide.  Going forward, the IMF estimates Ethiopia’s economy will grow at 8.0 to…

            On August 1, 2014, Uganda’s Constitutional Court overturned the Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) on procedural grounds, holding that the Act’s passing was unconstitutional because the necessary quorum of lawmakers was not present in parliament to vote on the bill.  This controversial legislation, which was passed on February 24, 2014, imposed a life sentence for certain homosexual …

On August 5th, Egypt announced the commencement of a project to dig a new canal lane running parallel to the existing Suez Canal in an effort to expand trade and speed up traffic transiting through the existing waterway.  The project is also expected to increase the number of ships that use the waterway each day,…

Africa. For some of us it is home and, to others, it may seem as foreign as the most distant frontier. Regardless of your familiarity with the continent, it is an inescapable fact that Africa is in the midst of an awakening to its seemingly endless potential. Home to seven of the world’s ten fastest…