Tag - development

 
 

DEVELOPMENT

Delegates meet for the Development Committee Plenary during the World Bank and IMF 2024 Spring Meetings in Washington on Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 24, 2024
Negotiating a bigger, better World Bank
Recent changes at the global lender are important steps toward making the World Bank’s financial model fit for “ending poverty on a livable planet.”
Outside of some activist movements pressing governments for more climate action, global warming is not yet at the heart of the political agenda in most countries.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 17, 2024
Climate change is political and we must treat it that way
Climate action hasn't made its way onto mainstream political agendas in most countries, to the detriment of our collective ability to solve the crisis.
Developing nations feel that international trade rules favor developed countries and undermine their interests, particularly in areas like agriculture and fishing subsidies.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 5, 2024
Why have developing countries soured on multilateralism?
The efforts of advanced economies to link trade agreements to labor and environmental standards could disadvantage developing nations.
The surprising election losses by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party to candidates of the Republican People's Party are signs of hope for democracy and secularism in the country.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 2, 2024
Turkey’s Erdogan is down, but don’t count him out
The election upset of President Erdogan’s AKP Party is just the start in a long fight for liberal democracy.
Workers at a factory in the town of Sriperumbudur, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, on Jan. 3. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has kept India on its swift upward path among the world’s largest economies. Many Indians are better off, though wealth gaps have widened.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 3, 2024
What 10 years of Modi rule has meant for India’s economy
The value of India’s stock market has tripled since the prime minister took office and its economy has almost doubled — but gains have been widely unequal.
Giant cut-outs of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other party leaders are positioned beside a road in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh on Feb. 25.
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 21, 2024
Hardships and broken promises no hindrance for Modi in India's rural north
If India's prime minister earns a third term in office, it will be in spite of the state of the rural and farming economy — not because of it.
Nigerian naira being counted in Lagos, Nigeria. Cash transfers offer a transformative solution to multidimensional poverty.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 15, 2024
A global cash transfer fund could end extreme poverty
Cash transfers offer a transformative solution to multidimensional poverty, and are aided by improvements in internet and phone coverage.
Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa says Tokyo will use foreign aid as one of its "most important diplomatic tools."
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 12, 2024
Japan vows to push 'offer-based' development aid in annual paper
Tokyo said it would improve its assistance program by combining the more proactive aid approach with its traditional request-based method.
The world needs to avoid the mistakes and pitfalls that go with providing debt relief and should craft sustainable solutions for financially distressed nations. 
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2024
Developing countries’ never-ending debt crisis
Creditors have a role in resolving debt crises. This means all eyes are on China, which is the single most important creditor for debt distress.
Farmers shout slogans as they burn an effigy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other ministers during a march toward New Delhi to push for better crop prices, at Shambhu Barrier, the border between Punjab and Haryana states, on Feb. 23.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 29, 2024
India's farmer protest fuels opposition hopes of denting Modi's appeal
India's beleaguered opposition parties have been searching for a narrative to counter the popular leader.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the international community is currently experiencing "gridlock" and suffering "colossal global dysfunction.”
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 28, 2024
No one wins in a lose-lose world
Fragmentation of the world economy could derail growth, especially in low-income countries, turning zero-sum thinking into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Western strategy in the Middle East has been a failure, leaving the region less stable than ever, exemplified by the conflict in Gaza.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 2, 2024
Why 'the rest' are rejecting the West
Western strategy in the Middle East has been a failure, leaving the region less stable than ever.
Changes from the World Bank are part of broader reform efforts to expand the development lender's mission to tackle climate change and other global crises, and vastly enlarging its lending capacity.
BUSINESS / Economy
Feb 2, 2024
World Bank to offer access to emergency funds from existing loans
The move will offer nations hit by a hurricane, earthquake or pandemic a liquidity burst that could reduce hardship.
A decision by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger to withdraw from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) could yet take time to implement, but if carried through, is set to disrupt the region's trade and services flows, worth nearly $150 billion a year.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 1, 2024
West Africa's 'Brexit' moment spells trouble for the region
The latest crisis highlights the growing rift between the Western-allied governments and military-run countries increasingly relying on Russia and China.
The rural economy has been hurt by a drop in the output of some key crops, such as wheat, in the past three years due to a rise in temperatures, patchy monsoon rains and falling reservoir levels.
ASIA PACIFIC
Feb 1, 2024
World-beating growth? Not for India's rural majority
For many in rural India, which is home to 60% of its 1.4 billion people, the country's so-called spectacular economic growth is nowhere in sight.
Given that developing countries’ domestic markets are much smaller than that of the U.S., liberal trade policies play a larger role in driving their economic growth.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 31, 2024
Developing countries should reject American-style protectionism
America’s current industrial policy poses an existential threat to the multilateral trading system it worked so hard to build
Farmers dry coffee beans at the Thiririka farming cooperative in Kiambu County, Kenya, in November 2022.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 15, 2024
Is it time for a coffee cartel?
If farmers in the developing world are prevented from getting their fair share from coffee production they should take matters into their own hands.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, with other leaders in June 2019.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / ANALYSIS
Jan 10, 2024
Xi eyes Global South as China elevates ties with record number of nations
Beijing elevated the way it described ties with 17 countries and territories, most of them from the developing world.
The Yangshan Deepwater Port in Shanghai. China’s manufactured goods surplus relative to global gross domestic product is now around 2%, and an estimated 45% of China’s manufacturing output is being exported as the nation’s 1.4 billion people can’t buy enough goods such as electric vehicles, ships and household appliances to meet the increased supply.
BUSINESS / Economy
Jan 8, 2024
Xi Jinping’s solution for China’s economy risks triggering new trade war
Manufacturing focus sets up Beijing for renewed tensions with both developed countries and emerging economies pushing to reach the lower rungs of the industrialization.
Tetsu Nakamura was a Japanese doctor who spent decades addressing some of the root causes of Afghanistan’s health crisis. He was killed, along with five others by still-unidentified armed men in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, on Dec. 4, 2019.
CULTURE / Film
Jan 5, 2024
New film ensures slain Japanese doctor's Afghan legacy lives on
An English-language documentary is set to introduce the humanitarian feats of Tetsu Nakamura, who spent decades tackling Afghanistan’s health crisis, to a new audience.

Longform

Later this month, author Shogo Imamura will open Honmaru, a bookstore that allows other businesses to rent its shelves. It's part of a wave of ideas Japanese booksellers are trying to compete with online spaces.
The story isn't over for Japan's bookstores