Development Front / Commentary
Commentary
Africa’s structural transformation debate is often framed around a familiar question: should African countries deepen their economic ties with the Global North or strengthen their...
On August 7, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, committing themselves to regard an attack on one as an attack...
Sir,Mr. Studwell’s response to my book review exaggerates our disagreements. Nobody ever said that Africa should not industrialize. Point 5 in the penultimate paragraph in...
Sir,I reply to Hafez Ghanem’s review of my book How Africa Works. Part of the problem with economic development as a subject is that it...
Jordan has a labor market problem. It is not that people work too little. It is that too much labor remains concentrated in activities that...
For more than twenty-one years, I worked across Pakistan, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan as a staff member of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)....
The capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) are a matter of heated debate. Can it generate new things? Can it produce scientific discoveries, novel hypotheses, or...
How Africa Works: Success and Failure on the World’s Last Developmental Frontier, Joe Studwell, Atlantic Monthly Press, 448 pp., $32, February 2026 Joe Studwell has spent...
A Conversation with Shanta Devarajan on Conflict and Development What follows is a conversation with Shanta Devarajan, Professor of the Practice of International Development at...