Recent patterns of technological change in the rich world have made it more difficult for low-income countries to develop and converge with income levels in the developed world. These changes have contributed to deepening economic and technological dualism even within the more advanced segments of developing countries’ economies. Economic development relies on the creation of more productive jobs for an ever-rising share of the workforce. Traditionally, it was industrialization that enabled poor countries to embark on this transformation. Factory work may not have been glorious, but it enabled farmers to become blue-collar workers, transforming the economy and society as a…

Even miracles have their limits. Vaccines against the coronavirus have arrived sooner and worked better than many people dared hope. Without them, the pandemic threatened to take more than 150m lives. And yet, while the world rolls up a sleeve, it has become clear that expecting vaccines to see off covid-19 is mistaken. Instead the disease will circulate for years, and seems likely to become endemic. When covid-19 first struck, governments were caught by surprise. Now they need to think ahead. To call vaccination a miracle is no exaggeration. A little more than a year after the virus was first…

I have been on record writing and speaking up about the deteriorating insecurity particularly banditry in the nation. It is well known that Zamfara State has been the epicenter of banditry in Nigeria with its people bearing the full brunt of the atrocities of these criminals. The state is near and dear to my heart because Gusau it’s capital city is where I spent my formative secondary school years, it is also the ancestral home of Ahmad Abubakar Gumi. It was therefore without any hesitation that I accepted his invitation to accompany him to the state on his nationwide advocacy…

Unlike the protests that roiled Russia in 2011-12 in response to Vladimir Putin’s third presidency, today’s protest movement has a charismatic and sympathetic leader. But Putin has spent the last decade consolidating a police state, and he is prepared to use every available tool to retain power. There are arguably two moments in the last century when a wrecking ball was taken to Russia’s political regime. In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution toppled the country’s teetering monarchy. And, in 1991, an abortive coup by Marxist-Leninist hardliners against the reformist Mikhail Gorbachev accelerated the tottering Soviet Union’s collapse. Does the wave of…