This article was originally drafted by the Centre for Democracy and Development for the newsletter “West Africa Insight” as part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Searchlight Process. For more Searchlight content on futurechallenges.org, please click here. The West Africa Transport and Transit Facilitation Strategy of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) […]

Arab  Spring, Act I: the seduction of straightforward revolutions. In December 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, a street vendor in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, set fire to himself to protest against his treatment by the authorities when he tried to get back the wares they had confiscated. . This self-immolation in the name […]

Re-socialization the Arab Spring The Arab Spring did not start with political claims. The Sidi Bouzid events were sparked by socio-economic factors, and it was only when Ben Ali killed many protestors[1] that the social uprising took on a regime-change objective. With hindsight, however, all the other events of the […]

Can a country have plenty of natural resources and yet fail to grow and develop? The resource curse paradox is more than a “worstcase scenario.” There is robust empirical evidence for a negative relationship between natural resource wealth and economic growth. [issuu layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml showflipbtn=true documentid=110509095345-14013963d43e452c9c0528f85a245299 docname=world_bank_from_curse_to_blessing username=FutureChallenges loadinginfotext=From%20Curse%20to%20Blessing.%20Natural%20Resources%20and%20Institutional%20Quality showhtmllink=true tag=botswana […]