Development Blogs.com

Zimbabwe’s economy suffers from ever-escalating inflation levels, price distortions for key commodities and utilities, high unemployment rates, rising poverty levels, foreign exchange and commodity product shortages, deteriorating public services, rising inequalities, and large income disparities. This harsh economic reality is crowding out young people’s ambitions of career and entrepreneurial development. In this Feature Service article, Roselyn Sekai Kapungu, 3rd place winner in CIPE’s 2007 Youth Essay Contest, talks about the destructive effects that this acute economic crisis has had on Zimbabwe’s education system and opportunities for the country’s youth. Education is conventionally thought to bring private benefits through increased earnings. But education brings greater...

Under President Putin, Special Aide and Deputy Chief of Staff of the Administration Vladislav Surkov was viewed as the Kremlin’s top “ideologist.” Now First Deputy Chief of Staff under President Medvedev, Surkov recently visited the annual summer retreat of the youth group Nashi (Ours). This Kremlin-backed project was designed to counter revolutions engineered from abroad during the 2007-2008 elections. It’s unclear whether the Kremlin believed its own propaganda; most analysts found the idea of a tent city on Red Square laughably impossible. Perhaps Surkov, too, knew this all along, or perhaps, feedback between Russia’s government and its citizens is so distorted that revolution was considered a genuine threat. The truth is immaterial; whether the paranoia was real or staged,...

With the price of oil at its record highs, it can be hard to imagine that key exporters thereof, six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates) may currently be facing economic problems of any kind. The signs of prosperity seems to be all around as gleaming towers rise in the middle of the desert and guests arrive by helicopter at the world’s only seven-star hotel, Dubai’s sail-shaped Burj al-Arab. And yet not all is well. A somewhat unexpected addition to the region’s stunning architecture is a… diabetes center in Abu Dhabi. Nearly one-fifth of the UAE’s native population now suffers from diabetes and the statistics are not much better in the rest of the GCC. A result of more sedentary lifestyle and...

Sadly, the roundup of foreign journalists continues in Zimbabwe as Mugabe does everything in his power to control the media and force his will on the Zimbabwean people in the wake of losing the presidential election.  Hidden in a story about the arrest of a New York Times journalist I found a startling detail that highlights the sad state of things: Mr. Bearak’s passport was confiscated, and he was required to put up 300 million Zimbabwe dollars as bail, about $10,000 at official exchange rates but only about $7 at black market rates. It is hard for some of us to imagine living in such an upside-down world where inflation is so high that paying $7 in bail is even possible. It borders on the absurd that there could be so large a difference between the nominal and real value of a...

In a country where inflation is running higher than 16%, the World Bank’s Doing Business report ranks the tax system last, and corruption is endemic – there are a plethora of potential government actions to be taken.  After months of government inaction due to the political crisis, the Ukrainian Rada (parliament) finally met just before the New Year.  Although they did manage to pass a budget for 2008 they failed to agree to much more.  Unfortunately, a full 10% of the new budget is dedicated to a repayment plan for personal Soviet era bank accounts, fulfilling a campaign promise, but returning to the populism that brought about the downfall of Yulia Tymoshenko’s previous government just two years ago.  I have a great deal of sympathy for those that lost all of their...