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It's a place of darkness. People are poor and hail from tribes and clans. They live in basic shelters in remote villages, with no running water or electricity, and no access to clinics. Subsisting on seasonal work, hunting and fishing to stock up food for the lean months, they worship nature's beauty. They consider themselves hardy, descendants of those who suffered war, famine, and religious persecution. They resent that their part of the earth gets attention only through the prism of movies or when natural or manmade disasters strike. Then oil is found and they are blessed.
Nope, this is not one of the 53 countries in Africa. It is not a "fragile state" the term often used for the richest in oil and gas and other mineral resources countries in Africa with the poorest citizens affected by ...
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It is now widely understood that achieving a sustained acceleration of GDP growth over the long term is a prerequisite for eradicating mass poverty. In most developing countries, fiscal policies, including expenditure and tax policies, provide some of the most feasible tools available to governments for achieving their development objectives. Hence the role of fiscal policies as instruments for promoting long term sustainable economic growth is of great importance, an issue that was discussed at the "Fiscal Policy, Equity and Long Term Growth" conference which took place at the IMF on April 21-22, 2013. What matters in this context is how fiscal policies are designed and implemented such that they affect the long term growth of the supply side of the economy, rather than as a tool of short ...
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Imagine that you are in an elevator. It stops to pick up the next passenger going up. It turns out to be H.E. Jayaka Mishro Kikwete, yes, the President of Tanzania himself, accompanied by a group of high ranking officials. The President turns and asks you what you think is the most important thing that he could do for his country. You have less than three minutes to convince him. What would you tell him?
I know what I would say, loud and clear: "Your Excellency, that would have to be improving the performance of the port of Dar es Salaam."
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Let's think together: Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with The Citizen wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.
Easy access to markets, public services, and jobs is indispensable for citizens to take advantage of economic opportunities and achieve progress. In Tanzania, as in most other countries in the region, roads are the predominant mode of transport for people and goods. However, insufficient transportation facilities and limited mobility are an everyday reality:
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Let's think together: Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with The Citizen wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.
In industrial countries, small and medium firms are the vectors of economic innovation and job creation. In the USA, small-businesses account for almost two-thirds of all net new job creation. They also contribute disproportionately to innovation, generating 13 times as many patents, per employee, as large companies do. Small business owners are also in general more educated and wealthier than the rest of the active population.
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How do countries and individuals become rich? Human history provides a clue. One of our most defining moments as a species took place some 10,000 years ago, when a group of humans started to switch from hunting and gathering food to growing it. This allowed them to settle down (in an area called Mesopotamia). If they produced more than they consumed, they could save for the future. With proper storage facilities, they no longer needed to eat and drink everything they had; instead they could put some aside literally for "rainy days", and, even more importantly, invest some of the agricultural output to produce even more.
Now zoom forward several thousand years: saving has become central to individual and collective prosperity. As a rule of thumb those who save more become wealthier because ...
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Co-author: Seyed Reza Yousefi
What does the "fiscal austerity" debate now blaring across the news mean for our clients? A recent academic spat turned media controversy centers on the role of national debt in holding back economic growth. We decided to take a closer look; it turns out to be instructive.
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Let's think together: Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with The Citizen wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.
Banks play a critical role in economic development, as success stories are difficult to find without a big increase in commercial lending over time. Countries like Korea, Malaysia and China saw their credit to GDP ratio surge by 40 percentage points during the 1990s. On the African continent, similar stories are emerging in Cape Verde, Senegal and Nigeria, though arguably at a lower rate than in Asia.
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Co-authored with Luc Christiaensen and Aly Sanoh
For a decade and a half now, Africa has been growing robustly, and the region's economic prospects remain good. In per capita terms, GDP has expanded at 2.4 percent per year, good for an average increase in GDP per capita of 50 percent since 1996.
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