Uganda’s Recipe for Growth
By IMFBlog
July 21, 2017
Construction worker in Uganda (photo: James Akena/Reuters/Newscom)
After two decades of steady growth, Uganda’s economy has slowed, and life for Ugandans is not improving fast enough.
Drought in the Horn of Africa, regional conflict, and slow credit growth have contributed to this decline, with per capita growth falling to ½ percent from an average of 5 percent for the past 20 years. […]
Banking On the Go
By IMFBlog
June 23, 2017
Tayo Oviosu at IMF lecture (photo: Ryan Rayburn/IMF staff)
Worldwide, more than two billion people are without bank accounts, and only one in three adults in sub-Saharan Africa has access to any type of financial services. In this podcast, Tayo Oviosu, founder and CEO of Nigeria’s leading mobile payment platform, Paga, reveals how his company is rapidly bringing millions of unbanked Nigerians into the banking fold. […]
Lagarde—Lending an Ear to Young Voices
By IMFBlog
June 9, 2017
As Managing Director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde travels the world engaging with country officials, civil society, nongovernmental organizations, and media representatives. Lagarde also makes a point to engage with women and youth groups, to listen to their concerns, and to discuss their vision for their countries.
The SDR: Giving An Old Idea New Life
By IMFBlog
June 2, 2017
The IMF’s Special Drawing Right, or SDR, was created more than 50 years ago and used only by IMF member countries to supplement their official reserves. The SDR’s value is based on a basket of five major currencies—the US dollar, the euro, the Chinese renminbi, the Japanese yen, and the British pound. In this podcast, Mohamed El-Erian, Chief Economic Advisor at the financial services firm Allianz, and a former deputy director at the IMF, says an expanded use of the SDR in global markets could help […]
Channeling a Voice for Women
Muna AbuSulayman is a Saudi Arabian media personality, whose television show, Kalam Nawaem, which means “soft talk” in Arabic, is the longest running and most popular social issues show in the Middle East. In this podcast, AbuSulayman discusses pushing social boundaries, including on topics such as gender equality. […]
Invest in Africa
by IMFBlog
As the Group of Twenty finance ministers and central bank governors meet in Germany this week, policymakers are looking to increase investment in Africa.
Jamie Drummond is co-founder of ONE Campaign, and in this podcast he says it’s no surprise Africa is on the agenda. […]
Schools, Skills, and Economic Growth
By iMFdirect
Eric Hanushek is an expert on the relationship between education and economics, and he says the only thing that matters for a country is the skills of its people.
“Countries that have lots of skills grow faster than countries that have low skills, and that’s an easy way to explain what’s going on in Africa and Latin America, where the skills are very low, and the countries are just not growing in the long run.” […]
Have Data—Will Travel
By iMFdirect
Author and innovation guru, Alec Ross says that technology is shaping the industries of the future.
“Ninety percent of the world’s data has been produced in the last two years. In fact, if you take the sum of all the information produced by human kind—from paintings on cave walls—to the year 2003, the sum of that data we now produce every two days.” […]