Eradicating Poverty ≠ Creating Prosperity. WILTW: Feb. 5–11, 2017
This is what happens when your village people are after you, but you keep underrating them.
“Street trade is central to urban life: it accounts for 12-24% of employment in the informal sector in a sample of African cities… Arrests will not stop street vending, because there are not enough jobs.”
“We have the raw materials, the skills, and the market, and if we stopped importing fuel our foreign exchange crisis might be over. If the central bank really believed that banning products from the official markets really led to local production of that product, then why isn’t fuel on the list? Surely fuel should be the 42nd item.”
This contributor takes a look at Professor Stephen Ellis’ last book titled ‘This Present Darkness: A History of Nigerian Organised Crime’.
He says, “It is a fascinating read covering, not just organised crime, but the evolution of the Nigerian state (or maybe they are the same thing?). At any rate, I want to share 8 random things I found interesting in the book and I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.”
The eradication of poverty is not the same as the creation of prosperity. Development practitioners should focus on the latter. What is the incremental value of teaching a five-year-old to read in a country where millions of 25-year-olds are out of work? Should development organisations not focus more of their efforts on the potentially more dangerous and volatile 25-year-olds than on the innocent five year olds?
✌
Nsuaha.
