The headlines, especially in the Western press, suggest that Africa is back again in the news for the wrong reasons. Misery has really never been too far away, but in the last few years foreign journalists looking for stories of deaths, diseases and destruction on the continent have had to find another hobby, the trendiest of which is Trumpoline, a riveting show from the White House. With violent conflicts receding, more orderly transfer of power, better business climate and growing prosperity, Africa has been rising. And then Mali happened. As of the time of writing, efforts by the 15-member sub-regional…

Nigeria’s Ivory Tower fought long, bitterly and hard against the country’s combination of whining civilian administrations and their virulent, military-dictator counterparts to snatch for itself the limited autonomy it enjoys today, allowing it a measure of independence and respectability. In times past, university administrators were glorified civil servants before limited autonomy, which came incrementally. At a point, whoever headed the Federal Government appointed by fiat the vice-chancellor; later, the universities were grudgingly allowed the power to make recommendations. Now, the universities are better off than in those jackboot days of military dictatorship – at least in the area of staff…

I really didn’t want to comment on Femi Fani-Kayode’s viral communicative primitivism toward Daily Trust’s Calabar correspondent because of my knowledge of the state of Fani-Kayode’s mental health, but I’ve read senior Nigerian journalists on social media rail against the Daily Trust reporter for asking a “rude question," and feel an obligation to intervene. Rude question? Well, there’s no such thing as a “rude question” in journalism. A Chicago journalist and humorist by the name of Finley Peter Dunne once said, more than a century ago, that, “the job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the…

Central banking in emerging markets has undergone a quiet revolution during the Covid-19 pandemic. Unlike in past crises, they have been able to mimic what central banks in advanced economies have been implementing: counter-cyclical policies with quantitative easing (QE), local-currency asset purchases, interest-rate cuts, and monetization of government deficits. In the past, such policies would have fueled inflation and downward exchange-rate pressure. Not so this time. With the exception of a few central banks that were already in trouble before the pandemic, emerging-market central banks have been able to use QE to create more room to maneuver in responding to…