A both serious and fun look at why Joburg will always do better in the long-run than Cape Town
Economy
A deep-dive into President Ruto’s first year in office following his election in August 2022 Kenyan presidential and parliamentary elections. Focus on President Ruto’s economic record and foreign policy scorecard.
A look at why inflation may not have been tamed in the coming months as is now widely-believed, with substantial drops in food and energy prices, leading the way. The expiry of the Russia-Ukraine grain deal and most of all the unpredictable yet ominous onset of this year’s El Nino could well see prices start…
A comprehensive analysis of why inflation might remain high over the coming decade – even if there is a lull ih the second half of 2023 – and how high interest rates might take swathes of the global economy and public finances over the edge of a debt ticking time bomb that has been slowly…
A look at the secretive Liberian Corporate and shipping registry that continues to be a tax haven, especially for the shipping industry. And alludes to the ultimate beneficiaries behind the scheme.
The supply-side mayhem caused by pandemic and war and that sparked a bout of global inflation for the first time in a generation; Whether transitory or not, what is certain is that it is a dry-run for the persistent and much higher inflation or even stagflation we were always likely to face later in the decade.
A deep-dive into how the Russian-Ukrainian war will affect South Africa’s economy and how it might act as a boon giving the already-battered country sustained tailwinds
On the 16th December 2021, I had a fascinating chat with Shuaibu Idris, a Nigerian development economist and MD of Time-Line Consult, a Lagos-based financial consultancy and management firm, about the state of infrastructure spending and general investment levels on the continent for an article for the weekday South African media outlet, Business Day.
An edited version of this article appeared in the Opinions and Analysis section of Business Day (South Africa) on 23/12/2021: https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2021-12-23-george-philipas-infrastructure-spending-in-africa-is-at-a-crossroads/
The pandemic has certainly not been kind to investment prospects in Africa. Lead by a slowdown in infrastructure investment from China, foreign direct investment (FDI), already heading south before the onset of the pandemic, fell by 18% in 2020. More ominously, greenfield investment, investment in new projects, fell precipitously by 63% according to the Global Investment Trends Monitor released by UNCTAD in Jan 2021, the largest regional fall on the globe last year. The proverbial onslaught culminated with the announcement earlier this month at the recent Forum of China-Africa Cooperation conference (FOCAC) in Dakar, Senegal that plots Sino-African relations for the next three years, of a vertical drop in investment from China from US$ 60 billion to US$40 billion.
A look at South African companies’ prospects on the continent, their past successes and failures and how this bodes in the immediate future in light of the recently-implemented AfCFTA.
The Business Day (South Africa) article includes insightful comment from Ken Gichinga, chief economist at Mentoria Economics based in Nairobi and Simon Newton Smith, Commercial Executive…