In The News

How Global Investors Make Money Out of Hunger

Horand Knaup, Michaela Schiessl, Anne Seith September 6, 2011
Traders, intent on making money, increasingly rely on products always in demand: food commodities. Record sums are being invested in commodities. “Agricultural commodities attract investors who are no more interested in grain than they were previously in dot-com companies or subprime mortgages,” explains a team from Spiegel Online. The result is fast-rising food prices, reports the UN Food and...

Band Aid

Michael Holman September 1, 2011
The absence of a government role compounds the heart-wrenching crisis in East Africa. Aid agencies, not African governments, are leading famine-relief efforts in East Africa, writes Michael Holman for the UK magazine Prospect. Drought and famine are threatening the continent’s most troubled nations, including Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan. “But this does not justify Africa’s absence from the...

Middle-Class Uprising Poses a Global Threat

John Paul Rathbone July 22, 2011
The world’s greatest source of instability might not be terrorism but a middle class angered by vanishing prosperity, the loss of a lifestyle with many comforts and protections, argues John Paul Rathbone for the Financial Times. He points to an observation of journalist Moisés Naím, that most recent conflicts are within rather than between civilizations. In developed and developing countries...

No Need for Speed

Charles Kenny May 27, 2011
Communication technologies, including cell phones and social media, increase awareness and connections to resources. A UN panel addressing broadband inclusion concluded that the technology is an essential infrastructure that could reduce poverty. Funding fiber-optic cable for broadband in developing nations may speed connections, but not be the fastest route to eliminating poverty, contends...

Is Growth Incomplete Without Social Progress?

Ejaz Ghani May 4, 2011
Poverty is concentrated in middle-income nations, explains Ejaz Ghani, World Bank economic advisor, writing for Project Syndicate. Poverty-reduction programs struggle to keep pace with population growth and rising wage inequality, though growth can ease the effects of income inequality. Income growth contributes to higher rates of education and literacy, yet poverty lingers in nations with...

Seven Steps to Prevent Recurring Food Crises

Shenggen Fan April 30, 2011
Extreme weather events that disrupt harvests lead to rising food prices, hitting hard the world’s poor who spend the majority of their incomes on food. The poor often work in agriculture, but rising costs of inputs and consumer resistance against rising prices “can reduce farmers’ profit margins, distort long-term planning and dampen investment in improved productivity,” explains Shenggen Fan for...

The Arab Spring’s Chill Winds

April 27, 2011
The uprisings in the Arab world – especially in Libya – are slowing economic growth in Bangladesh. Remittances sent from the Arab world represent 12 percent of Bangladesh’s GDP. “Bangladesh depends on remittances from the Middle East more than any other large country,” explains this article in the Economist. Bangladesh, a severely impoverished nation of 156 million, is a parliamentary democracy....