Much analysis of the wave of unrest sweeping the Middle East has identified economic hardship as a crucial motivation for the uprisings. Many Middle East experts pointed to unemployment and the rising price of food in Tunisia to explain that country’s uprising. The same experts pointed to unemployment and mass poverty to explain the subsequent Egyptian uprising. But after Egyptians successfully ousted Hosni Mubarak, unrest subsequently spread to Libya, Algeria, Iran, Bahrain, Yemen and Jordan, countries with very diverse economic conditions. Standards of living in Bahrain and Libya, for example, are much higher than in Egypt and Yemen. Furthermore, the [...]
Africa
The East African Community, comprising Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, recently launched a $300 million infrastructure program aimed at reducing the cost of doing business in the region. In an e-mail interview, Andrew Roberts, senior operations officer in the World Bank’s Africa Regional Integration Department, discussed infrastructure and development in the East African Community. WPR: What are the major areas of underdeveloped infrastructure within the East African Community? Andrew Roberts: Electricity access in the countries in the subregion is very low, ranging from 5 percent in Burundi and Rwanda to 30 percent in Sudan in 2008. Because demand is [...]
For players of the decades-old parlor game of divining succession in despotic Arab regimes, one rule never varied: The current dictator would personally choose his successor, almost always selecting one of his sons to head the regime after his death. Until this week, that dynastic pattern seemed certain to apply to Libya’s Col. Moammar Gadhafi, whose sons have spent years seeking their flamboyant father’s favor and jockeying for position within that most peculiar of regimes. The eccentric, histrionic and often-buffoonish Gadhafi has provided four decades of outrage, disbelief and even entertainment for outside observers. For those living under his rule, [...]