Blue Lines
After a year of global health emergency and economic destruction, our correspondents look forward to how governments are reacting to popular demands for reconstruction and a new political order
Although so much reporting over the past year has been on the...
Blue Lines
'Warning lights – for our societies and the planet – are flashing red' thunders the UNDP's latest report, which introduces a new variable – a country's emissions of carbon dioxide and its material footprint – into its Human Development Index.
The big idea...
Blue Lines
For a government so desperate to boost foreign currency reserves, Zimbabwe's gold industry should be a cash cow, especially with spot prices up to around US$2,000 an ounce, boosted by the uncertainty of Covid-19.
Official gold exports fell 23% to less tha...
Blue Lines
Zambia ran out of road on 13 November when its debt negotiations hit an impasse and it became the first African country to default since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the continent's economies. The crisis could also force a more coordinated response from the ...
Blue Lines
For listeners across Africa, United States President Donald Trump's dawn broadcast asserting that he had won the 3 November election and ordering vote counting to stop had a surreal if not unfamiliar quality. Analysts at the Brussels-based Crisis Group ha...
Blue Lines
The International Monetary Fund reckons the Covid-19 pandemic will result in sub-Saharan African economies contracting by 3% this year and bouncing back by a similar amount in 2021. Over half of low-income countries are either in debt distress or at high ...
Blue Lines
The peace accord between Sudan's transitional government and three armed groups was a serious step forward from the human and economic damage wrought by decades of conflict. Without ending the myriad civil conflicts, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has litt...
Blue Lines
The lack of a coordinated response by commercial and official creditors to the worsening debt distress faced by resource-based African economies could trigger a wider payments crisis ahead of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and Worl...
Blue Lines
As President Nana Akufo-Addo becomes chairman of the Economic Community of West African States and the Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area prepares to start operations in Accra, it's a bad time for Ghana to get into a trade row with Nig...
Blue Lines
Nigeria was taking no chances in its campaign to ensure that its former agriculture minister Akinwumi Adesina gets another term as President of the African Development Bank. Adesina is the sole candidate in the AfDB's elections on 27 August; the rules sti...