Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are a reserve asset created by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to supplement its member countries’ reserves.

According to the IMF’s website, a total equal to US$943 billion in SDRs has been allocated to date from the time they were created in 1969. This figure is inclusive of the SDR456 billion approved on the 2nd of August 2021. This most recent allocation was made necessary by the need to help countries around the world to cope with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The value of the SDR is based on a basket of five currencies which include: the US dollar, the euro, the Chinese renminbi, the Japanese yen, and the British pound. …

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) prefaced its policy review by stating that inflationary pressures have dissipated which it called conducive and supportive of its expected economic growth rate of 7.8 per cent in 2021. 

The policy review was characterized by optimism on the part of the monetary authorities as it painted a rosy economic outlook. The tone of the document was very upbeat with the RBZ expecting global economic recovery from the adverse effects of the coronavirus pandemic because of the stimulus packages whose effects it is expected will trickle down to emerging economies and special drawing rights (SDR) allocations adding up to US$650 billion. …

One of Africa’s biggest challenges is finding employment for the youngest continental population on earth. As we all know the devil makes work for idle hands and with the unemployed and under-employed youth of Africa making up more than 25% of the population, there are many idle hands. This stresses parents, politicians, policemen and philanthropists and as birth rates grow and life expectancy lengthens we don´t seem to have very many good answers to this problem.  

Also read:Burgeoning Sub-Saharan Africa Youth Population To Revolutionize its Economy Report

Yet a meaningful percentage of Africa’s young population is better educated than it has ever been and has a much better understanding of the global economy, trends, opportunities and technology than at any point in history. This small but significant percentage has been educated to degree level, is hungry for opportunity, fiercely ambitious and does not expect a handout from a Western …

Pursuing economic empowerment through purely legalistic and regulatory means has fatal shortcomings which defeat the premise of black or native participation in the economy because history has taught that such a strategy creates a very skewed distribution of the wealth that must be sustainably shared.

Black Economic Empowerment and Indigenization pursued solely from this strategy is a sophisticated form of socialism especially where there is little in the way of economic growth. Its process and eventual outcome create a skewed wealth distribution and novel kind of class structure. 

A vibrant economy is the most potent instrument of empowerment, inclusion, and participation of the people of that country. Vibrant economies are not the result of chance but are the result of deliberate pursuit and action.

Read: Three things TMEA brings to Ethiopia in expansion plans

Creating an economy that is enabling and empowers all citizens requires the development of the following …

Economic transformation in Zimbabwe requires the nation to look carefully at where the rest of the world is going. The rest of the world is in the middle of the third industrial revolution driven by technology and services. These two comprise what is now known as the knowledge economy and represent a clear departure from the significance of the primary/extractive and secondary industries. These same industries are what have anchored the economy from the time the southern African country became a nation. Technology and services are where the greatest value can be appropriated, and it is in technology and services where the key to exponential growth in productivity lies. 

The most magnificent thing about technology and services is that it pervades every sector of the economy and we have seen it converge with just about every area of the economy in recent times. The concept of the internet of things …

It is almost inconceivable and rather far-fetched to associate Africa with  nuclear proliferation, yet ahead of the forthcoming International Day against Nuclear Tests observed annually on the 29th of August, it is imperative to not only commemorate the history of the continent’s brush with nuclear tests, whose effects have ironically recently surfaced on a higher magnitude in another continent, but also to formulate feasible strategies for the continent to tap into and harness nuclear power as a viable option to meeting the gaping energy deficits to drive industrialization and economic transformation.  

Africa’s dark colonial past comes calling back with the recent occurrence of massive clouds of radioactive dust making a return on French soil, emanating from the Sahara Desert where nuclear colonial heirlooms buried decades ago continue to be unearthed by the day. The event stirs up a cauldron of repressed haunting memories that best remain buried in history …