James5

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“Hinging the destiny of a country to an individual is absolutely not correct” quote from Eriya Kategaya, a former Ugandan cabinet minister, in this article on the “Danger in Embracing Africa’s Visionary Leaders”. The article is a good take on the return to the “One Big Man” approach to development - that the African way is to have one chief, a benevolent dictator, and that’s how things will get fixed. History, though, says otherwise.

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Investment in Africa has reached $39 billion per year as investors see Africa as a safer bet then the European and American markets. FDI is going to be central to future development, but it also depends on how the money is used. Petro-dollars, especially, have a notorious history.

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Gapminder is a terrific site, especially to show in your university tutorials. And they’ve just added a few more data sets, including bad teeth per person. Good stuff.

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Chris Blattman has another excellent post based on his experiences in Africa, this time on how the children call out to foreigners. It seems “Mzungu!” (white man) has given way to “Chinese!”, perhaps indicating the chase face of development in Africa.

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Rodrik’s article in the Guardian makes some good points about the recent failure over Doha. Let’s hope that when things get back on track we can get a real development agenda going and the WTO can start living up to its preamble more.

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