The World Bank expects the international economic slowdown to be at its worst in over four decades in 2024. This is mainly due to powerful Western nations’ contractionary macroeconomic and geopolitical policies.
South Suffering Due to Powerful Nations’ Policies | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)
Africans have long been promised trade liberalisation would accelerate growth and structural transformation. Instead, it has cut its modest production capacities, industry and food security.
Trade Liberalisation Kicked Away African Development Ladder | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)
The ITUC demands substantial changes in global financial strategies to better meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), after the conclusion of the United Nations’ Financing for Development Forum (FfD Forum).
Developing countries wanting to pursue industrial policy were severely reprimanded by advocates of the ‘neoliberal’ Washington Consensus. Now, it is being deployed as a weapon in the new Cold War.
Industrial Policy, East or West, for Development or War? | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)
Look at the charts of the World Bank: 2023 was noty positive at all. More poverty, more inequality, ‘development work more complicated’…
In recent decades, failure to sustain economic progress has been blamed on a supposed middle-income country (MIC) trap. Such blaming obscures as much as it supposedly explains.
The Human Rights Council of the UN just published the Report of the Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development.
An interesting document with new arguments for defending and promoting not only ‘social protection’ but a new perspective on ‘development’.
“Inequality, social protection and the right to development” (A/HRC/54/83)
A civil society briefing – published in response to the World Bank’s public consultation on the ‘Evolution Roadmap’ and endorsed by 74 organisations and indidivuals (see pp. 9-10) – calls for a World
Bank Group roadmap that prioritises people, participation and the planet over profit and economic
growth. It provides an alternative analysis of the current ‘crisis of development’ which the Evolution
Roadmap seeks to respond to; presents key evidence on the damaging effects of the ´Cascade´
approach to date; and proposes an alternative pathway towards a more equitable and sustainable
World Bank Group ‘evolution’, which would reverse the flow of the Cascade, putting public interest –
including grassroots voices, and economic, social, women’s, girls’ and human rights – at the centre
of the public development paradigm for the 21st century, rather than the profits of corporations and
private finance
Read the briefing
This piece is well-developed, with an essential historical context going back many decades that is essential to understanding how we got here and is often obscured in contemporary accounts. The history here is particular to USAID, but the patterns and practices described apply to the entire OECD global aid complex, including Canada.
We may disagree with some arguments in this OECD/Development matters article, but yes, the debt problem needs an urgent solution! And poor countries do indeed need a new start!
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