Africa is experiencing the highest urban growth rate in the world. Sub-Saharan African cities alone need to gear up to receive over 300 million more people over the next twenty years. To give an idea of the magnitude of what this represents in reality, it is equivalent to creating groups of urban buildings large enough to house the entire present population of the USA. However, neither the production capacities for local infrastructure and serviced land, nor the resources, nor appropriate financing mechanisms are currently in place to face a challenge on such a scale.

Read more

What are the consequences of the creation of new groupings of emerging economies with a strong emphasis on South-South cooperation? How do we get civil society involved in high level political debates?

Read more

Hello to all,

I wanted to share with you a project that is particularly dear to me in this year 2010 that is marked by the 50th anniversary celebrations of African independence (symbolically, as this is an average). It is an essay entitled “Africa’s billions”, which I have written with my colleague Olivier Ray and that is published today in French by Odile Jacob (the English version is due to be published early next year).

Read more

I wanted to react to several very powerful pieces - each accompanied by concrete proposals - which we have just read on our blog about how to manage the present crisis. Achim Steiner demonstrated that a Green New Deal was not an additional response to the crisis but that it should lie at the heart of whatever strategies are selected to combat it. Kemal Dervis also appealed for us not to relax our efforts in fighting climate change but, on the contrary, to seize the opportunity of the stimulus packages to strengthen our actions in that field. Moreover, Minouche Shafik reminded us that the dramatic impact the present economic downturn will undoubtedly have on the very poor required enhanced social protection measures. By the way, may I take this opportunity to welcome Minouche to our small community of bloggers! Finally, using the WFP as an example, Josette Sheeran has targeted a fundamental issue: that of the demand for the goods of developing countries. 

Read more

During the past two months we have seen Governments commit more than USD 3000 billion towards stabilizing financial markets. A further USD 2000 billion have already been announced for economic stimulus packages. Never in the history of humankind has so much money been allocated with so little preparation and strategic analyses

Read more

The failure to reach an agreement in Geneva has severely weakened the Doha round. What could be the consequences of a collapse of the Doha negotiation from the perspective of developing nations?

Read more