Million Mekonnen's Blog

Sustainable development will only succeed if politicians prioritise people's needs over economic progress, says new report.

How will the new US farm bill affect food-aid reform, and why is it taking so long to reach the statute book?

From the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, we must learn to be honest about the nature of a fundamentally flawed global food system.

U.S. Food Aid Needs Overhaul, says Report [Infographic].

Economics 101 and the wrath of Oxfam.

Better infrastructure, innovative farming techniques and access to funding can ensure that the continent escapes famine’s blight.

A presentation on Complexity and Development by Owen Barder.

World Bank Interactive of global movement of money due to remittance.

When African states gained independence, the continent's new leaders agreed to respect the old colonial borders to avoid endless wars. But separatist movements still abound

In this article Christopher Barrett and Marc Bellemare explains the difference between price rise and price volatility and suggests policymakers should focus on bringing costs down.

[T]here is a great deal more to Africa than wars and famines. The problem is that news, as defined by news editors throughout the media, is when something important or interesting happens. There is no conspiracy about African coverage (though there is a great deal of laziness among editors who are happy to limit their story selection to images of dramatic disasters.) And news organizations must cover stories of starvation and war as they would cover disasters in the rest of the world. The question is where are the African stories that show the fuller picture? Years of covering Africa taught me not to go on holiday at Christmas or in August when nothing much happened in the world. That was when desperate news editors with space to fill might finally run that article on Namibia’s politics or Mali’s nomads. But there was always the eternal nagging news editor’s question: “So what?” That’s Richard Dowden, in a  post  over at African Arguments.