East African Business Notifier

Mohamed Adow NAIROBI – When delegates from around the world convened in Bonn, Germany, last month for the 62nd session of the United Nations Climate Change Subsidiary Bodies (SB62), the specter of sovereign debt loomed large.  For African countries, in particular, debt is no longer a problem unfolding in parallel with escalating climate shocks and widening development deficits, but rather the key obstacle to effective crisis responses. Debt reform and climate finance are two sides of the same coin. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, African countries owe  $655 billion  in external debt, and debt-service payments have more than doubled since 2010, driven by rising interest rates and currency depreciation.  This year, the continent’s collective debt-service bill will amount to a whopping  $79 billion . In 2023, 34 African countries  spent more  on debt service than on health or education, let alone disaster relief or green infra...

Jayati Ghosh NEW DELHI – The world’s largest corporations now rival most governments – not only in terms of revenue and assets, but also in their ability to shape political outcomes. Their power is reinforced by the immense personal fortunes of billionaires, which enable them to wield disproportionate influence over public policies, laws, and regulations. Crucially, extreme concentrations of wealth and power could not have developed without the active support of policymakers, whether tacit or explicit. And because governments themselves create the legal, regulatory, and political environments in which these fortunes are built, they retain the authority to restrain, regulate, or even expropriate private wealth. The fact that they rarely do so does not reflect a lack of capacity, but a deliberate political choice. Consequently, being an oligarch is inherently precarious. Crony capitalism may grant enormous advantages, but it also carries built-in risks. Chief among them is political chan...

In response to the upcoming 2025   G eneral   E lections   in Malawi , the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), in partnership with the African Union (AU),   launched a Pre-election Initiative in Lilongwe aimed at fostering dialogue, consensus-building and preventive diplomacy to ensure peaceful and credible elections in Malawi. Key Components of the Pre-elections Initiative which will ran from August to December 2025 will include High-Level deployment of Eminent Persons from the AU and COMESA  to engage with key electoral stakeholders including senior government officials, political leaders, judiciary, electoral authorities, security agencies, civil society, media, traditional leaders, youth, women, and the private sector. This COMESA-AU initiative will be led by H.E Lady Justice (retired) Effie Owuor – a member of the African Union’s Panel of the Wise and H. E Ambassador Rashed Gamaal Ashraf, the Chair of the COMESA Commi...

Antara Haldar NEW DELHI – The 78th anniversary of India’s independence this month offers an opportunity to recall one of the most insidious moments in the country’s post-independence history: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s 1975 decision to declare an emergency and suspend civil liberties. A new book by political scientist Srinath Raghavan,  Indira Gandhi and the Years That Transformed India , not only revisits that fateful move, but also traces its lasting impact half a century later. Raghavan’s unsentimental autopsy of India in the 1970s – one of the country’s most turbulent decades – is a timely study of how political power can be used to bend the scaffolding of democracy. He sets out to offer “an antidote to every generation’s illusion that its own problems are uniquely oppressive,” but the book’s themes resonate in ways that even the author may not have fully anticipated. Gandhi, the daughter of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is often depicted as either a cynic...

Rakesh Mohan, Janak Raj NEW DELHI – India finds itself at a critical juncture: it must accelerate economic growth while meeting its climate commitments. Estimates of the country’s climate-financing needs have  ranged  from $160 billion to $288 billion annually through 2030, but these top-down figures rely on broad assumptions and often fail to reflect sector-specific realities. In a  recent study , we take a different approach, using a bottom-up methodology to provide a more accurate estimate of India’s climate-finance requirements. We focus on four of the country’s highest-emitting sectors: power, steel, cement, and road transport. Importantly, our study measures only the additional capital expenditure required to fund climate mitigation, over and above the investments already expected under a business-as-usual scenario. We estimate that these four sectors will require a total of $467 billion in climate finance by 2030, averaging $54 billion annually, or roughly 1.3% of ...

Fitsum Assefa Adela ADDIS ABABA – Next month, heads of state and government, climate scientists, private-sector leaders, civil-society and youth representatives, and global development partners will convene in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s vibrant capital and the seat of the African Union, for the Second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2). This is not a symbolic gathering.  It is a declaration of intent by Africa, an opportunity to unleash a wave of high-return investment, and a potential turning point in how the world confronts the climate crisis. Africa is on the frontline of a socially and economically corrosive global environmental catastrophe. Droughts and floods are disrupting agriculture and displacing millions of people across the continent.  According to the African Development Bank, climate change is  reducing  Africa’s GDP growth by 5-15% each year – losses that mean millions fewer jobs and less investment in critical infrastructure. But while Africa is a poster child...