Read all posts for ‘poverty’

This post was produced for the Global Economic Symposium 2013. Read more at http://blog.global-economic-symposium.org/. While growing up in a tiny underdeveloped village in Pakistan, where even the availability of electricity was a blessing, I had seen the best and the worst of life at a very young age. The people around […]

This post was produced for the Global Economic Symposium 2013. Read more at http://blog.global-economic-symposium.org/. At an event like the Global Economic Symposium 2013 recently held in Kiel that proclaimed a global outlook but was distinctly weighted towards Europe in terms of speakers and audience, it was very interesting to share impressions […]

A mere two subway stops away from  Bucharest’s center lies the ghetto of Ferentari. It’s Romania’s most dangerous neighbourhood, a festering pocket of crime, gangs, drug addiction, drug trafficing, prostitution, abject deprivation and multi-layered exclusion. 100,000 Romanians call it home. During the interwar period and all the way through the […]

“I don’t know if she is a real human being or an angel, because human beings can’t and don’t live like this,” said a friend of mine while narrating the story of the 72-year-old Salwa, a poor, almost-blind Egyptian woman whom he met on his way home. After work, he […]

Agnes Namagembe is one of 4.2 million Ugandans living in urban areas. Like the majority of Uganda’s urban dwellers, Agnes lives in the capital, Kampala. Like many other African cities, Kampala is informally divided between up market and low market residences. The rich live in upmarket areas of the town […]