The Deepwater Horizon disaster has the familiar ingredients of deregulation, deception, and destruction that characterize the relations between governments and multinational corporations. It was a man-made disaster, like Chernobyl.
Dar es Salaam hosted the World Economic Forum on Africa on May 5. This event — which brought together 11 heads of state with a thousand participants from 85 countries — offered a counter-narrative to the political and economic disorder described by policy pundits like Robert Kaplan that have long distorted U.S. appraisals of the region’s strategic importance. Western media often overlook the continent’s many success stories. With the Wall Street Journal opening an Africa bureau in late 2009, Africa’s increasing economic and political significance is only just beginning to be noticed in the West.
Foreign aid programs continue to pour funds into what seems like Africa’s bottomless bucket. Illicit financial flows out of Africa are twice the amount of foreign aid into the region. Between 1970 and 2008, according to a study by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), illicit flows from Africa totaled at least $854 billion, and could reach as high as $1.8 trillion when taking into account missing data from certain countries and other conduits of illicit flows not captured in the study.
This century has witnessed China’s emergence as the main challenger to the superpower status of the United States. In a dramatic fashion, China is beginning to establish its foothold in the highly strategic, energy-rich region of the Middle East by forging strong ties with regional powers and gradually challenging the U.S.-Israeli regional dominance. Thanks to decades of double-digit economic growth and accelerating military modernization, China now has both the need for and the capability of engaging the Middle East.
Next month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is expected to invite Israel to join its 30-strong club of rich, mostly Western countries pursuing a “stronger, cleaner, fairer world economy.” Accession would conclude three years of formal negotiations and almost two decades of lobbying from successive Israeli governments, with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman especially keen to align his country with the world’s advanced democratic nations. OECD status will accelerate investment, raise Israel’s credit rating, and strengthen its voice in international affairs.
The issue of corruption resonates in developing countries. In the Philippines, for instance, the slogan of the coalition that is likely to win the 2010 presidential elections is “Without corrupt officials, there are no poor people.”
Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, New York, is sick and tired of watching people in local communities “squabble over crumbs,” as he puts it, while so much local money pours into the Pentagon’s coffers and into America’s wars. He’s so sick and tired of it, in fact, that, urged on by local residents, he’s decided to do something about it. He’s planning to be the first mayor in the United States to decorate the façade of City Hall with a large, digital “cost of war” counter, funded entirely by private contributions.
With Ghana on the verge of an oil ‘boom’ in 2010, Mawuli Dake considers the steps and measures needed to ensure the country derives full and equitable benefit from the resource. While Ghana’s mining industry has historically been characterised by a lack of transparency and the dominance of foreign multinational interests, Dake stresses that the burgeoning oil industry must not be allowed to go the same way.
Overwhelmed by sadness, empathy and disbelief, the world’s eyes are focused on the rescue and relief efforts for those in Haiti. However, many who have worked in Haiti fear that a preventable long-term disaster lies on the horizon if international interventions don’t break with past patterns. As international aid begins to pour into Haiti, we have a brief moment to break with past mistakes and bring real change to the country.
It’s bad enough when a person drowns in debt. Shock waves multiply when a corporation teeters on the verge of failure. The economy becomes even more agitated when a country declares bankruptcy, as Iceland did in 2008 and Hungary and Latvia almost did in 2009.