Policy Center for the New South

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a shock to both demand and supply, leading to the biggest collapse in world output since the Great Depression. Since late 2020, a more rapid than expected recovery has been observed. Five questions arise frequently. Here is my take on those questions. 1- Is the pandemic receding? No, but we have a vaccine to control it, and are better at managing it with selective measures, as distinct from total lockdowns, which kill the economy. The global number of ...

This young Ivorian entrepreneur, who has spent 7 years abroad, has moved back home in 2015 to head the local NGO 35.35. Since July 2021, he has been in charge of Africa for Dunia Payment, a startup operating in fintech through a mobile app, aiming at democratizing banking services. Richard Seshie was born and raised in Abidjan, the capital city of Ivory Coast. His childhood dream was all about strategy. “I wanted to enroll in the army, but this was just a dream and I don’t really h ...

The report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released at the beginning of August, left no room for doubt. According to its estimates, it will be necessary to accelerate the pace of global containment of carbon emissions if the expected increases in global average temperatures are to be kept below 2 or 1.5 degrees Celsius, with correspondingly less-dramatic climatic consequences. Even if emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced over the next few ...

We explore whether improved export sophistication increases women’s participation in wage employment. Using panel data from a large group of developing and emerging economies, and Fixed-effects and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimators, we find that export sophistication has significant and mostly positive effects on women’s participation in paid employment in all regions, but these effects are nonlinear, since they become positive only after a threshold level of sophistica ...

Le 24 août 2021, le Ministre algérien des Affaires étrangères a convoqué une conférence de presse pour annoncer la rupture des relations diplomatiques avec le Maroc, avec effet immédiat. Cette décision, d’essence unilatérale, diffère de la rupture qui découle d’une décision adoptée par le Conseil de sécurité dans le cadre du Chapitre 7 de la Charte des Nations unies. En effet, dans le cas des pays qui font l’objet de sanctions, comme l’Afrique du Sud du temps de l’apartheid, le Cons ...

L’Union européenne (UE) a annoncé le 14 juillet une proposition de taxe carbone à ses frontières, qui devrait renchérir les importations de produits fortement émetteurs (acier, aluminium, ciment, électricité et engrais). Cette même taxe est déjà appliquée au sein de l’UE, qui veut désormais l’imposer aux fabricants étrangers. En soi, le projet part d’une bonne intention. Il n’est pas motivé par le protectionnisme, mais par des préoccupations climatiques on ne peut plus justiíées. S ...

The world woke on Monday August 23 to higher international reserves for all countries. A new allocation of US$650 billion in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to its member countries had entered into force (SDR450 billion). SDRs are an international reserve asset created by the IMF and added to countries' other foreign reserves. It is not a currency that can be used by private agents. Governments, on the other hand, can unconditionality exchan ...

There is not much of an argument: some countries in mighty Africa faced and mastered the COVID-19 invasion as efficiently, or even better, than any nation on the globe, including former colonial powers in Europe. By June 2021, 140,400 Africans had died, compared to more than 500,000 virus victims in Brazil, or 600,000 plus in the U.S. Some experts explain the result as a product of long experience from a multitude of previous health crises: Ebola, AIDS/HIV, malaria, tuberculosis. Ot ...