Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Africa Day: Decolonize or Perish

Fadhel Kaboub — Mon, 25 May 2026 23:09:07 GMT

Happy Africa Day!

Every Africa Day, we hear the same speeches about “Africa Rising.” And every year, millions more young Africans enter economies that still export raw materials, import food and fuel, service external debt in foreign currencies, and remain trapped at the bottom of global value chain. Africa is not poor. Africa is structurally disempowered, impoverished, and economically colonized. That distinction matters.

Subscribe now

The continent holds some of the world’s largest reserves of green minerals, the youngest population on the planet, extraordinary renewable energy potential, vast agricultural capacity, and strategic geopolitical leverage in an increasingly fractured global order. Yet Africa continues to finance the prosperity of others while borrowing expensively to survive. That is not an accident of history. It is the colonial architecture of the global economy.

This Africa Day, the central question is no longer whether Africa can “develop” within the existing system. The real question is whether Africa is finally ready to redesign the rules of the system itself.

The African Union’s Agenda 2063 calls for “The Africa We Want”: an integrated, prosperous, sovereign continent capable of financing its own development and shaping global affairs. But this vision will remain rhetorical unless Africa confronts the deeper structures of dependency that continue to define its economic model.

The problem is not simply corruption, governance failures, or lack of entrepreneurship (a.k.a. the favorite explanations offered by mainstream development discourse). The deeper problem is neocolonial structural dependency.

Most African economies remain trapped in colonial economic patterns:

exporting raw commodities,
importing manufactured goods,
depending on external financing,
and surrendering policy space to creditors and international financial institutions.

According to UNCTAD’s State of Commodity Dependence 2025, commodity dependence remains one of the defining characteristics of developing economies, especially in Africa. In many countries, commodities account for more than 60% of export earnings. This is the heart of the debt trap.

Subscribe now

Countries that depend on imported food, fuel, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, machinery, and technology inevitably face chronic foreign exchange shortages. When global commodity prices fall or external shocks hit, debt servicing explodes, currencies weaken, inflation rises, and governments are pushed into austerity cycles that destroy developmental capacity. This is why debt crises in Africa are not temporary liquidity problems. They are symptoms of incomplete structural transformation, which I refer to as the unfinished business of structural economic decolonization. And this is why Africa cannot borrow its way to sovereignty.

The solution is not more extraction. It is strategic structural transformation. Africa must move from being merely a supplier of raw materials for the global energy transition to becoming a manufacturer of the technologies, infrastructure, and industrial ecosystems of the future.

The continent possesses immense leverage in critical energy transition minerals such as cobalt, lithium, manganese, copper, graphite, rare earths, platinum group metals, and more. Yet the current trajectory risks reproducing the same colonial pattern: exporting raw minerals while importing expensive batteries, solar panels, electric vehicles, and industrial machinery. That would not be a green transition. It would be green colonialism.

Africa’s response must be a continental Pan-African coordination: One Strategy, One Voice. Not fifty-four fragmented negotiations with multinational corporations and foreign powers. Not a race to the bottom on taxes, royalties, and labor standards.
But coordinated Pan-African joint industrial policy, strategic resource governance, regional value chains, technology transfer requirements, and investment in domestic productive capacity.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers a historic opportunity to build integrated regional markets and continental industrial ecosystems. But trade integration alone is not enough. Africa cannot trade its way out of structural dependency while remaining stuck in commodity exports. I wrote about the olive oil and cocoa neocolonial structural traps recently, two of many examples of commodity exploitation that go as far back as the transatlantic slave trade.

Industrialization is not optional.
Food sovereignty is not optional.
Energy sovereignty is not optional.

Without them, political sovereignty becomes largely symbolic. This is especially urgent in the era of climate breakdown. Africa contributes less than 4% of historical global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it faces some of the harshest climate impacts on Earth. At the same time, hundreds of millions of Africans still lack access to electricity. The continent is being asked to decarbonize before it has industrialized. But Africa should reject the false choice between development and decarbonization.

The real choice is between:

continuing fossil-fuel dependency and import dependency,
or
building sovereign renewable energy systems that power industrialization, public services, transportation, agriculture, and regional integration.

Africa has some of the world’s greatest solar potential, yet still accounts for only a tiny fraction of global solar capacity. This is not because Africa lacks sunlight. It is because the global financial architecture systematically underinvests in African productive transformation while overpricing African risk. More importantly, it is because Africa’s massive renewable energy potential represents a risk of disrupting the global economic and geopolitical hierarchy.

The cost of capital imposed on African countries remains one of the greatest barriers to development. African governments often pay dramatically higher borrowing costs than wealthy countries, despite lower historical default rates in many cases. This financial penalty suppresses infrastructure investment, renewable energy deployment, industrialization, and public services.

Subscribe now

Meanwhile, the global North lectures Africa about governance while continuing to:

object to technology transfers,
subsidize its own industries,
protect intellectual property monopolies,
and extract African wealth through unequal trade and financial arrangements.

Even development finance is shrinking. Reuters recently reported that Africa faces an estimated $400 billion annual development financing gap, while traditional aid flows continue to decline sharply (I recently spoke about this at an OECD panel hosted by ODI). This is why Africa must stop waiting for rescue. The future lies in building a new financial and development architecture rooted in:

regional monetary cooperation,
sovereign development banks,
strategic capital controls,
public development finance,
South-South cooperation,
and coordinated industrial policy.

In other words, Africa must finance its own transformation on its own terms. This does not mean isolation from the world. It means engaging the world from a position of strategic clarity and collective leverage.

The emerging multipolar order creates opportunities Africa has not seen in generations. This is what I call the Geopolitical Bargain of the Century. Competition between China, the United States, Europe, Gulf states, and other powers creates bargaining space. But bargaining power only exists when Africa negotiates collectively and strategically.

Otherwise, the continent risks becoming once again merely a battlefield for external powers competing over resources, markets, and geopolitical influence. If we are going to celebrate an Africa Day, it should force us to confront the unfinished business of structural economic decolonization. National flags celebrate independence. National anthems remind us of that independence daily, but the economic structure of colonial extraction largely remains intact.

True liberation in the twenty-first century means:

monetary sovereignty,
food sovereignty,
energy sovereignty,
technological sovereignty,
digital sovereignty,
and intellectual sovereignty.

It means decolonizing not only institutions, but also the very assumptions about what development is supposed to look like.

For too long, Africa has been told to “catch up” by imitating economic models that are themselves collapsing under the weight of inequality, ecological breakdown, and geopolitical fragmentation.

Africa does not need to become a replica of the West. Africa has the opportunity, and perhaps the responsibility, to help design a different civilizational model altogether; one rooted in solidarity rather than extraction, public purpose rather than financial speculation, ecological balance rather than endless accumulation, and human dignity rather than perpetual debt servitude.

That is the real promise of Africa Day. Not simply celebrating survival, but organizing for sovereignty. Not asking for inclusion into a broken system, but building a new one on African terms.

Leave a comment

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University, and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is the author of Global South Perspectives on substack. In 2025, Dr. Kaboub was recognized by the New African Magazine in the Top 100 Most Influential Africans under the Thinkers & Opinion Shapers category. He is a board member of the United Nations High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs at UN-DESA. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, a member of the Earth4All 21st Century Transformational Economics Commission, a Steering Committee member with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, and a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition Finance. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publications include “A Coherent Framework for Sovereign Debt and Economic Transformation: Towards a Global South Debtors’ Coalition,” (Institute for Economic Justice, 2025), and Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), African Forum on Climate Change, Energy and Development (Abuja), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). Dr. Kaboub is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively called The Geopolitical Bargain of the Century: Towards a New International Economic Order of Peace, Justice, and Sustainable Prosperity (forthcoming).

Slavery is the Gravest Crime against Humanity

Fadhel Kaboub — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 14:35:55 GMT

Today marks the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and on this March 25, 2026, Ghana’s President John Mahama will be at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to support The UN General Assembly vote on a resolution designating the transatlantic African slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity.” This important recognition sets the stage for structural reparations and structural transformation for Africa and the rest of the Global South. That is the next frontier of the struggle for justice.

[update: The UN resolution passed with 123 votes. Three countries voted against it (the US, Israel and Argentina), while 52 countries abstained.]

If we want to understand how the modern world economy was built, we have to stop treating the trafficking and chattel enslavement of Africans as a tragic “labor system” sitting on the sidelines of industrialization. It was an engineered architecture of extraction, designed to do three things at once:

transfer people at a continental scale,
convert human beings into capital assets, and
organize global trade and production around coerced commodity frontiers.

That architecture did not disappear. It mutated. Its logical components, namely forced specialization, external dependence, racialized devaluation of labor, and the financing of “development” through extraction, are still familiar to the Global South today.

Subscribe now

1) The scale of slavery wasn’t incidental: it was a demographic and economic shock

Let’s start with the basic arithmetic of the transatlantic system. The best-known quantitative baseline is the Voyages / Transatlantic Slave Trade Database: about 12.5 million Africans were forced aboard slave ships, and about 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage (1526–1866); not to arrive as migrants, but as legally commodified property for plantation economies.

That number matters economically for a simple reason: removing millions of people, disproportionately young and able-bodied, was not just “population loss.” It was the targeted extraction of productive capacity, skills, and future generations. In other words, it was an early, violent form of what we would now call deindustrialization-before-industrialization: stripping labor and social reproduction from one region to accelerate accumulation elsewhere. Entire nations never recovered from that damage.

2) The “underdevelopment” of Africa is not a metaphor

For decades, Global South scholars have insisted that underdevelopment is made, not found. What’s striking is how much of that claim is now supported by mainstream empirical research.

Nathan Nunn’s landmark work constructs historical estimates of slave exports using shipping records and documents on enslaved people’s origins, then tests whether exposure to the slave trades is associated with present-day economic outcomes. The core result is blunt: countries that exported more enslaved people tend to be poorer today, with a “robust negative relationship” between slave exports and current economic performance, and additional strategies to address causality.

Warren Whatley synthesizes the growing econometric literature and emphasizes that researchers find recurring evidence of long-run harm, including lower income per capita, heightened conflict and mistrust, underdeveloped access to credit, and greater political corruption, among other constraints on growth.

This is important for how we talk about “African poverty.” It is not primarily a story of internal failure. It is a story of historical extraction becoming institutional path-dependence; with measurable legacies in incomes, trust, conflict dynamics, and credit access. In other words, the economic damage of slavery and colonialism did not stop when slavery ended and colonial empires left Africa.

3) Slavery didn’t just use capital. It created capital by turning people into collateral

One of the most revealing corrections to conventional economic storytelling is this: enslaved Africans were not merely labor. They were also used as financial instruments.

A 2025 peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Global History by Igor Martins and Erik Green argues that slavery was a unique institution because it granted enslavers “complete rights over mobile property,” giving access to both labor and capital; and that the capital-investment dimension is key to understanding slavery’s persistence. They specifically highlight situations where the data allow us to observe enslaved people functioning as collateral in economic transactions across the United States, Brazil, and the Cape Colony.

Read that carefully: collateral. That means the system didn’t just extract output from coerced labor; it expanded credit by making human beings pledgeable assets. This is how plantation economies plugged into banks, merchants, and insurance, and that is why slavery is at the core of the history of modern finance.

4) Cotton wasn’t “a crop.” It was an organizing technology of global capitalism

If you want one commodity that makes the argument about slavery crystal clear, it is cotton.

In his peer-reviewed work, historian Sven Beckert describes cotton as one of the world’s largest industries at mid-century and notes a central fact: prior to 1861, most of the world’s raw cotton supply was produced by enslaved people on plantations in the American South, then spun and woven by textile workers in places like Lancashire.

Writing on the antebellum world cotton market, economist Douglas Irwin states that the United States accounted for about 80% of the world’s cotton production between 1820 and 1860, and that cotton comprised over half of all U.S. exports in the antebellum period, with about three quarters of the crop exported, almost all to the United Kingdom.

What does that mean in plain language? It means a coerced labor regime in the Americas was producing the key input for the most dynamic industrial sector in Britain and Europe. And it means the “free market” celebrated in many textbooks was, in practice, a market whose central commodity chain was anchored in unfree labor that mand secured by state power, property law, and violence.

5) The debate is not whether slavery mattered, but how it mattered, and for whom

There’s a temptation in public discourse to treat this as a binary: “Did slavery cause industrialization?” Serious scholarship about this issue is more careful and more damning.

Economic historian Gavin Wright revisits the long-running debates and explicitly connects British and American literatures on slavery and growth, focusing on what he calls the “neglected” second part of the Williams thesis: slavery and the slave trade were “once vital” for expanding British industry and commerce, and then became less “indispensable” later as structures changed.

We don’t have to accept every claim in every camp to see the structural point: even when scholars debate magnitudes and mechanisms, they are debating within a framework where slavery is already recognized as deeply entangled with trade, finance, and industrial expansion, precisely because the commodity chains were so large and so central.

6) From slave ships to “data colonialism”: the continuity is the business model

Here is why this history belongs on Global South Perspectives, not as memorialization, but as political economy. The transatlantic system did at least three things that still define Global South insertion into the world economy:

Forced specialization: Africa and the Americas were locked into extractive roles, while Europe consolidated higher value-added production.
Externalized vulnerability: prosperity in the core depended on controlled access to inputs (cotton then; critical minerals, and data now).
Financial capture: when people can be collateral, or when future export revenues can be collateral (today’s sovereign debt architecture), credit expands for extractors while the periphery is disciplined into repayment.

Whatley’s summary of long-run legacies, especially underdeveloped access to credit and greater political corruption, reads like a description of the structural vulnerabilities that today’s lenders and ratings agencies exploit. And Liu, Xu, and Zhou (2026, Journal of Corporate Finance) add contemporary firm-level evidence: using data from over 30,000 firms across 41 African countries (2006–2021), they find a robust positive relationship between historical slave export intensity and present-day measures of firm corruption (including bribes requested/paid and corruption obstacles), with channels including diminished trust and weak institutions.

Again, the point is not to reduce everything to slavery. The point is to understand slavery as a foundational shock that helped design durable global hierarchies that later colonialism, unequal trade, debt regimes, and modern extractive supply chains would deepen rather than reverse.

The Final Word

In short, slavery economically restructured the world by:

moving millions of Africans through violent forced migration at scale (12.5 million embarked; 10.7 million survived)
converting human beings into mobile property that could function as capital investment and collateral, expanding credit and accumulation in slave societies
organizing global industrialization around plantation commodities—especially cotton—where the U.S. produced about 80% of world cotton (1820–1860) and exported most of it to the U.K., while much of the world’s cotton supply before 1861 was produced by enslaved labor
leaving measurable long-run damage in Africa’s development trajectory, including lower incomes and multiple institutional constraints on growth

The way forward is to acknowledge the harm, offer a public apology, commit to structural reparations. All of this requires African countries to speak with one voice, unapologetically and uncompromisingly about reparations, and to create the economic and geopolitical leverage to compel the perpetrators to pay for the reparations claims.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Africa's Giant Leap: Decolonize to Transition

Fadhel Kaboub — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 21:45:08 GMT

I am happy to share my latest contribution, a new deep-dive paper published by the Earth4All Initiative of the Club of Rome. The paper, titled “Africa’s Just Transition Opportunity: Decolonising Economic Transformation for Climate Resilience,” explores one of the most urgent questions of our time: how can Africa pursue climate action while simultaneously undoing the colonial economic structures that continue to restrain its development trajectory. You can read the full paper here. We will also discuss the key findings during the Earth4All deep-dive launch webinar on Monday March 23, 2026 at 10am EDT or 5pm EAT. You can RSVP for the webinar here. I hope many of you will join the conversation. I will highlight some of the paper’s main messages and will add a few points about the importance of Pan-Africanism, joint-industrial policies, and geopolitical strategies.

Subscribe now

Africa did not cause the climate crisis, but it is paying the price

Africa’s relationship to the climate crisis is defined by a profound injustice. The continent contributes only a small share of global greenhouse-gas emissions, yet it is has some of the most exposed regions to climate shocks such as droughts, floods, rising food insecurity and displacement. At the same time, hundreds of millions of Africans still lack access to basic energy services.

But climate vulnerability alone does not explain Africa’s predicament. The deeper issue is structural.

For centuries, Africa has been locked into a particular role in the global economy: exporting raw materials, importing manufactured goods, and providing low-cost labour within global supply chains. These roles were not accidental. They were constructed during the colonial period and reproduced through the rules of international finance, trade, investment and taxation.

The result is that many African economies remain trapped at the bottom of global value chains. Even when exports increase, the highest value-added segments of production namely technology, branding, manufacturing, and finance remain concentrated in the Global North.

This structural position has profound consequences. Persistent trade deficits force countries to borrow foreign currency to finance imports of food, fuel, medicine, and industrial equipment. Over time, these external deficits accumulate into sovereign debt crises that constrain public investment in development and climate resilience. In short, the climate crisis and the debt crisis are not separate problems. They are symptoms of the same structural imbalance in the global economy.

Subscribe now

The structural roots of Africa’s economic entrapment

In this Earth4All paper, the analysis shows that Africa’s economic vulnerability can be traced to three interlocking structural deficits: food, energy, and manufacturing value-added. This is very much in line with the analysis produced in the Just Transition report (2023), and several pieces that I published recently (see this, this, and this for example).

First, the continent faces a severe food deficit. Despite possessing vast agricultural resources, Africa today imports a large share of its food, partly because global trade rules and agricultural subsidies in the Global North have historically undermined domestic food systems in the Global South.

Second, Africa faces an energy deficit. More than 600 million people across the continent still lack access to electricity, while many more rely on polluting fuels for cooking and heating. This energy poverty persists despite the fact that Africa holds some of the world’s richest renewable resources. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the continent’s renewable energy potential could generate up to 1,000 times its projected electricity demand using existing technologies within the next 15 years.

Third, Africa faces a deficit in manufacturing value-added. Much of the continent’s manufacturing sector is structured around low-value assembly operations that depend heavily on imported inputs and technology. This model generates limited domestic value capture and reinforces dependence on external supply chains.

Taken together, these deficits create a persistent structural trade imbalance. Countries must borrow foreign currency to finance imports, which then leads to recurring external debt cycles.

The central insight of this analysis is therefore simple but powerful: Africa cannot decarbonize an economic system that has not yet been structurally and economically decolonized.

The false solutions dominating the climate debate

Unfortunately, much of the current global climate agenda fails to address these structural realities. Instead of supporting structural transformation, Africa is often encouraged to rely on mechanisms such as carbon markets, offset schemes, and export-oriented green investments. I have debunked all of these as dangerous distractions here, here, and here.

Carbon markets, for example, are frequently presented as a major source of climate finance. In practice, they function as “pollution permits,” allowing large emitters in wealthy countries to continue producing greenhouse gases while purchasing offsets generated elsewhere to greenwash their unwillingness to act on climate change.

These schemes can displace indigenous communities, generate speculative profits for intermediaries, and deliver little to no meaningful emission reduction. At the same time, revenues from such projects are often used to service external debt rather than finance structural transformation.

In this sense, the emerging carbon-offset economy risks reproducing a familiar pattern: the extraction of value from African ecosystems to sustain the insatiable obsession with growth, consumerism, waste, and planned obsolescence in the Global North.

Subscribe now

Pan-African Structural Transformation

If Africa is to pursue a genuine just transition, climate policy must be embedded within a broader strategy of Pan-African structural economic transformation. As I have argued before. there are three strategic pillars for such a transformation.

The first is food sovereignty. Rather than relying on imports and volatile global markets, African countries must rebuild resilient domestic food systems rooted in agroecology and local production. This is a climate resilience solution, but it’s also a pathway to escape the external debt trap, and decolonize the economy.

The second is renewable energy sovereignty. Africa possesses extraordinary renewable resources (solar and wind to geothermal and hydropower) but currently captures only a fraction of this potential. Despite hosting some of the world’s best solar resources, the continent receives only 1% of global clean-energy investment. Expanding renewable energy systems for domestic use, especially electricity access, clean cooking, and industrial power, would simultaneously reduce import dependence and support long-term economic development. This is a climate resilience solution, but it’s also a pathway to escape the external debt trap, and decolonize the economy.

The third pillar is Pan-African industrial policy. Industrialization at the national level is often constrained by small markets and limited economies of scale. Regional industrial cooperation can overcome these barriers by pooling resources, coordinating supply chains, and building integrated markets across the continent. Such cooperation is particularly important in sectors linked to the global energy transition. Africa holds large reserves of the critical minerals used in batteries, renewable technologies, and electric mobility. With the right industrial policies, these resources could support a new generation of green manufacturing industries across the continent. This is a climate resilience solution, but it’s also a pathway to escape the external debt trap, and decolonize the economy.

The Earth4All “Giant Leap”

The Earth4All modelling framework examines two possible global trajectories for this century. The first scenario, which the researchers call “Too Little Too Late,”assumes incremental policy changes and continued reliance on the existing economic model. Under this scenario, inequality rises, ecological degradation accelerates, and global temperatures exceed safe limits.

The alternative scenario, which the researchers call the “Giant Leap,” envisions a coordinated transformation of economic systems across five domains: poverty reduction, inequality, gender empowerment, food systems, and energy systems. For Africa, this transformation would require a deliberate strategy of structural change supported by international cooperation and reform of the global financial architecture.

Subscribe now

From climate finance to climate justice & reparations

The debate about climate finance often obscures a deeper issue: historical responsibility. Industrialized countries accumulated wealth through centuries of fossil-fuel-driven growth while contributing disproportionately to global emissions. The climate crisis therefore represents not only an environmental problem but also a historical imbalance in the global economic system.

Addressing that imbalance requires more than loans and market mechanisms. It requires meaningful transfers of resources, technology, and policy space to enable structural transformation (aka structural decolonization) across the Global South. In other words, what is needed is not charity. What is needed is climate justice in the form of climate reparations, which I’ve written about here, here, here, and here.

Subscribe now

It’s Pan-Africanism or Death!

The global economic order is entering a period of rapid transformation. Supply chains are shifting, energy systems are being rebuilt, and geopolitical alliances are taking new shapes. These changes present both risks and opportunities for Africa. If current patterns continue, the continent could remain a supplier of raw materials and a consumer of imported technology; therefore, once again positioned at the bottom of global value chain. But if African countries coordinate strategically under a Pan-African economic and geopolitical strategy that prioritizes collective reliance via food sovereignty, renewable energy sovereignty, and joint industrial policies, then Africa could transform the continent into a major economic and geopolitical powerhouse in the 21st century. The question is not whether Africa has the resources, talent, or potential. The question is whether African Heads of States have the courage to think, act, and lead as a Pan-African unit to be reckoned. If they do, then I have no doubt that Africa will be unstoppable.

I don’t use the term Pan-Africanism lightly. It’s not the nice fluffy term that some people use as a rhetorical and diplomatic expression of brotherhood, sisterhood and occasional solidarity of the convenient kind. Pan-Africanism is the economics of industrialization, because without economies of scale, no African country can industrialize. Pan-Africanism is the economics of prosperity, because without it Africa cannot become the economic powerhouse that it deserves to be in the global food, energy, transportation, logistics, finance, insurance, real estate, and manufacturing systems. It’s Pan-Africanism or Death! Because the breakdown of all the life-sustaining systems (food, water, biodiversity, energy, health, etc.) is accelerated by the climate crisis, dangerous distractions, and neocolonial greenwashing forms of extractivism and economic entrapment.

I have also discussed many of these themes in this recent episode of Macro N Cheese. Take a listen “You can’t vote away Colonialism.”

Subscribe now

This has never been done before!

In this 10-min clip, I explain how a specific kind of Pan-African joint industrial strategy is able to not only unleash Africa’s potential for a just transition and green structural transformation, but also redraw the geopolitical map of the world by positioning Africa and the rest of the Global South at the center of a new international economic order of peace, justice and sustainable prosperity. This is what I call the Geopolitical Bargain of the Century. I argue that this has never been done before, because we're trying to undo colonial and imperial structures that have kept billions of people in poverty, and we will do this without abusing nature, without throwing our own people under the bus, without invading or colonizing any other nation, and without inflicting revenge on former colonial and imperial nations. We are inviting the world to join us in this win-win endeavor to benefit humanity.

Subscribe now

Join the conversation

We will discuss these ideas in more detail during the upcoming Earth4All Deep-Dive Launch Webinar on Africa’s just transition. Read the full paper here and RSVP for the webinar here. I hope many of you will join the conversation on Monday March 23, 2026 at 10am EDT or 5pm EAT.

Cocoa Colonies & Chocolate Empires

Fadhel Kaboub — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 02:19:08 GMT

The world’s chocolate economy is built on an uncomfortable neocolonial paradox: Africa produces most of the cocoa beans, but the Global North captures most of the value through processing, branding, marketing, and retail gatekeeping. This is a classic case of neocolonial extraction from the Global South. Let’s start with the core fact that rarely makes it into “ethical chocolate” campaigns: cocoa is overwhelmingly an African commodity. Cacao is a non-native colonial crop that was introduced to Africa by European empires in the 19th century.

According to the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO), Africa produces roughly 71–74% of global cocoa bean production in recent cocoa years. Cacao is 100% a Global South commodity with the largest producers being Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Ecuador, Nigeria, Cameroun, Brazil, and Indonesia. Yet most of the value is captured by Global North corporations. Cocoa, like so most Global South commodities such a coffee, tobacco, cotton, and strategic minerals (read my post about the olive oil industry), is trapped in a familiar neocolonial arrangement: the Global South exports a raw or minimally processed input, while the Global North controls the profitable segments via industrial processing (“grinding”), manufacturing, global brands, and supermarket shelf space.

Subscribe now

The downstream choke points of neocolonial extraction

The higher value-added creation in the cocoa business begin outside the farm gate. Cocoa beans are processed into liquor, butter, and powder (“grinding”), and then transformed into branded consumer products. In practice, the strategic command nodes are dominated by a concentrated set of multinational processors and brand owners. Even where “origin grinding” exists, it is often controlled by Global North firms operating in Africa, not by African-owned industrial heavyweights. A Reuters report on Côte d’Ivoire’s grind data notes that the country’s grinding output includes production from major grinders such as Barry Callebaut, Olam, and Cargill, and describes Côte d’Ivoire as the world’s largest cocoa producer while also noting competition for global grinding leadership with the Netherlands. In other words, even when processing happens “in Africa,” the corporate ownership of processing capacity and the profit repatriation channels often remain fully captured by the Global North.

In the last few years, cacao prices have reached $10,000 per ton, but in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, cacao prices at the farm gate only fetched a fraction of the New York futures price (See graph below). The Financial Times reported on the cacao smuggling out of Côte d’Ivoire over the last few years. When global market conditions squeeze producers at the bottom of the value chain, they create perverse incentives for illegal trade, corruption, and illicit financial flows to further abuse countries like Côte d’Ivoire of what is rightfully their national wealth. Even the EU’s so-called Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is not going to be able to address the cacao bean smuggling and will de facto exempt the traceability requirements since it’s not a deforestation concern. In other words, this is a new mode of colonial abuse rubber stamped by EU trade regulators.

Follow the margins, not the marketing

The extraction of value in the cacao-chocolate industry is not a mystery; it is measurable variable. According to an Oxfam report (April 2025), for a standard milk chocolate bar sold in Germany, supermarkets capture about 42% of the value, while cocoa farmers receive less than 9%. That one statistic explains the political economy of cocoa imperialism better than a thousand corporate sustainability brochures. It is retail and branding power that decides who earns what, not the geography of cacao production or the hard work of the farmers.

Now, let’s take a look at the concentration of profitability in the chocolate industry:

Hershey (United States) reports an operating profit margin of 25.9% in 2024.
Mondelez (United States) reports FY 2024 operating income margin of 17.4%.

These are not “normal” margins for a sector allegedly struggling to pay farmers decent wages, and invest in better living conditions for farming communities. These margins are consistent with what I call abusive market power. That is the power to set prices, terms, pass through costs, and the power to defend shelf space in high income retails markets.

Who are the chocolate heavyweights?

To better understand the cacao empire, it is helpful to separate the cocoa economy into three corporate layers:

1) Cocoa processors or grinders: This is the industrial conversion of cacao into butter, powder, and liquor. These firms sit between producers and consumer brands, and they control a major value choke point in the global value chain:

Barry Callebaut (Switzerland), which is often described as the leading cocoa/chocolate manufacturer/processor in the world.
Cargill (United States), which is a major cocoa and chocolate processor with global supply chain integration. Cargill is also a member of the so-called ABCD corporations that control the majority of the global food system (Cargill is the “C” in ABCD).
Olam (Singapore), which has the third largest cacao processing footprint globally, and is a major player in Côte d’Ivoire’s cacao grinding sector.

2) Global brand owners: These are the Global North consumer-facing chocolate and confectionery heavyweights of the industry. This is where marketing rents and brand premiums are captured:

Hershey (United States), which had an operating profit margin of 25.9% in 2024.
Mondelez (United States), which had an operating income margin of 17.4% in 2024.
Other major brand owners include Nestlé, Mars, Ferrero, and Lindt to mention a few, but here is the list of the confectionery heavyweights. Yes, I noticed that too: zero companies from the Global South.

Subscribe now

3) Retail and supermarkets: These are the gatekeepers of shelf space in the Global North. Supermarkets are not passive “channels.” They often capture the largest slice and control the terms of entry, especially through private label. Even if the Global South manages to break through the first two layers of market entry of processing and branding, if you don’t have shelf space, you’re cut off from consumers in high-income markets like the US and EU. That being said, some efforts have been made to challenge the supremacy of the chocolate heavyweights, but they remain at the margin of the industry in niche markets.

The structural diagnosis

Cocoa’s injustice is not mainly about “bad actors.” It’s about a system that assigns price and climate risk to smallholders in West Africa and the rest of the Global South, and pricing power to processors, brands, and retailers in the Global North. That is why public debate keeps circling around “ethical sourcing” while the fundamentals do not change. If farmers receive less than a 10% share of final value while supermarkets take more than 40% and branded firms post 17–26% operating profit margins, the core issue is structural bargaining power, not a shortage of corporate commitments or the risk of bankruptcy for multinational corporations.

Can the Global South decolonize chocolate?

The Global South must stop acting as a set of fragmented exporters and start acting as a bloc that reorganizes the terms of trade, investment, and value capture. I explained in my last post how Tunisia and the rest of Global South can decolonize the global olive oil industry. Similarly, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and the rest of the Global South, as the exclusive producers of cacao beans, can coordinate joint industrial policies to reclaim their rightful place in the global chocolate market.

A serious strategy cannot be centered around producing more cacao, but rather about capturing more value and asserting our collective weights across the entire value chain. That implies a coherent and comprehensive Global South strategy with four basic pillars:

Regional industrial policy to scale Global South and African-owned grinding/manufacturing capacity, rather than merely host foreign-owned plants.
Collective bargaining by major producers (especially Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana) not only on farm gate price mechanisms, but on processing terms, brand licensing, and long-term offtake contracts.
South–South market building and retail alliances to reduce dependence on Global North supermarket gatekeepers who currently capture more than 40% in major consumer markets.
Development finance targeted at logistics, quality control, branding, and standards infrastructure because the premium is earned in those nodes, not at the export docks.

In short, cocoa is not just an agricultural commodity. It is a map of how global markets are structured to preserve the Global North’s neocolonial command over value chains. The world does not merely “consume chocolate.” It consumes a neocolonial institutional architecture that systematically leaves African producers carrying the risk while others collect the rents.

Subscribe now

You can follow him on LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Bluesky, YouTube, and TikTok @FadhelKaboub.

Thanks for reading Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Tunisia's Olives & the EU's Well Oiled Colonial Machine

Fadhel Kaboub — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 22:51:41 GMT

Did you know that some of your favorite olive oil may come with a bitter colonial aftertaste? Allow me to explain. Tunisia is one of the world’s leading olive oil producers. In strong harvest years, it ranks among the top global producers and is consistently the largest producer outside the European Union. According to the International Olive Council (IOC), global olive oil production fluctuates between roughly 2.6 and 3.6 million tonnes depending on climatic cycles (IOC, January 2026). This year, thanks to decent rain season after years of droughts and heat waves, Tunisia’s production may reach half a million tonnes, placing it as the second largest producer globally behind Spain. Yet if you walk into a supermarket in Paris, Berlin, or New York, Tunisian brands are almost invisible. This is not a branding failure. It is the predictable outcome of the EU’s well-oiled colonial machine of global value chain hierarchies that plagues the Global South for decades.

Subscribe now

A recent article in the Financial Times (January 1, 2026) documents how Tunisia exports much of its olive oil in bulk to Europe, where it is blended, bottled, and marketed under Italian or Spanish labels. Tunisia supplies the oil. Europe supplies the label. The value is not in the olive. It is in the brand, the bottle, the distribution contract, and the shelf space. And of course, what I’m exposing here applies to other Global South olive oil producers such as Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Managed Access, Not Market Access

Tunisia’s integration into the EU market is governed by quotas. Under the EU–Tunisia framework, Tunisia benefits from a standing duty-free quota of 56,700 tonnes per year for olive oil exports. Beyond that level, tariffs apply. Following Tunisia’s tourism collapse after the 2015 Sousse attacks, the EU temporarily granted an additional 35,000 tonnes annually for 2016–2017 under Implementing Regulation 2016/605.

More recently, in January 2026, the European Commission confirmed that Tunisia’s zero-duty quota was fully allocated for the ninth consecutive year in the 2025/26 season.

This tells us two things:

Tunisia is competitive and indispensable.
Tunisia’s role is capped and administratively managed.

That is not free trade. That is a neocolonial controlled integration.

Who Captures the Value?

The downstream segments of the olive oil market are dominated by a small group of European firms that control bottling, blending, private-label contracts, and supermarket access in the Global North.

Deoleo (Spain) is widely described as the world’s largest olive oil bottler and owns major brands including Bertolli, Carapelli, Carbonell, and Sasso (OFI Magazine, March 26, 2025).
Sovena (Portugal) markets itself as the world’s largest supplier of private-label olive oil and supplies supermarket store brands across Europe and North America.
Acesur (Spain) operates across refining, bottling, and export markets with brands such as Coosur and La Española.
Salov (Italy), owner of Filippo Berio, is one of the largest global players in branded olive oil.

These companies control relationships with large supermarket chains. They manage blending across origins. They determine labeling strategies. They dominate private-label pipelines. In other words, they sit at the command nodes of the global value chain of the olive oil market.

Olive Oil as a Case Study in Structural Dependency

What we see in olive oil is the classic pattern of Global South commodity dependency:

The Global South produces raw material.
The Global North controls processing and branding.
Market access is quota-bound.
Value capture happens downstream.

Tunisia is at the top of the production system by volume. but it is locked at the bottom of the hierarchy because it lacks control over the architecture of value extraction.

The olive oil case mirrors broader structural realities across Africa: Cocoa in West Africa. Coffee in East Africa, Lithium in Southern Africa, Rare earths in the Sahel, and the same pattern of colonial extraction continues to this day. The Global South produces the real value, but the Global North confiscates and retains the commercial value.

Can Tunisia break this cycle?

Global South countries must move from being price-takers in fragmented commodity chains to becoming bloc-level negotiators in integrated value systems. Tunisia’s olive oil dilemma illustrates why.

Incremental reform of the kind that would give it slightly larger quotas, marginal branding campaigns, and donor-funded export promotion, will not alter the structure. What is required is systemic repositioning:

Regional Value Chain Sovereignty
African producers should coordinate to build continental bottling, branding, and distribution networks under the AfCFTA framework, rather than competing for marginal EU quota expansions.
Sovereign Development Finance for Downstream Integration
Public development banks must finance bottling plants, storage facilities, logistics hubs, and marketing infrastructure by treating value-chain upgrading as strategic industrial policy, not as private entrepreneurial risk.
South–South Retail Alliances
Why should African olive oil depend exclusively on EU supermarket chains? Emerging markets in Asia, Latin America, and intra-African urban centers offer alternative demand poles.
Collective Bargaining Power
A coordinated bloc of Global South olive oil producers—North African and beyond—could negotiate better trade terms, branding recognition, and standards more effectively than isolated national exporters that are too small to make a difference in a global market that is hardwired against them. .

Tunisia produces world-class olives, but unless Tunisia and its Global South peers coordinate their control over bottling, branding, distribution, and retail access, they will continue to supply upstream value while others capture downstream rents. The olive oil aisle in a European supermarket is not just a consumer choice space. It is a visual display of neocolonial power and trade hierarchies.

Stay tuned for my next post about cocoa and the global market for chocolate. A different crop, but the same neocolonial system of extraction.

Leave a comment

You can follow him on LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Bluesky, YouTube, and TikTok @FadhelKaboub.

Sri Lanka's 17th IMF Debt Trap

Fadhel Kaboub — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 20:56:39 GMT

Since 2022, Sri Lanka has been struggling with the worst debt crisis in the country’s history due to a substantial decline in foreign exchange revenues from tourism, remittances, and exports. I wrote about it back then in The Lens (Stephanie Kelton’s substack). The debt crisis forced the country to agree to the 17th IMF intervention since 1965 with one of the most aggressive austerity programs in the country’s history. If we track IMF interventions in Sri Lanka, the record shows that the IMF intervened in Sri Lanka once every 3 years on average to dictate the country’s domestic economic policy choices.

Subscribe now

The fact that Sri Lanka is deeper in debt after 60 years of IMF micromanagement has got to mean one of two things; either the IMF is an incompetent institution, or it is in fact engaging in intentional economic entrapment in Sri Lanka and the rest of the Global South. I believe it is the latter. Either way, this means that Sri Lanka and the rest of the Global South must reject the IMF’s so-called “Debt Sustainability Analysis” (DSA), refuse to follow IMF policy prescriptions, and develop a coherent alternative that addresses the root causes of external debt (see for example what I wrote with my colleague Andrés Chiriboga here; and here is the Spanish version of the same paper).

Sadly, what made the Sri Lanka debt crisis worst was a climate-induced disaster on November 28, 2025 when Cyclone Ditwah killed 643 people and displaced 2.2 million people across the entire country. At the time, I joined more than 120 economists calling for a halt on Sri Lanka’s debt payments. and I co-authored an op-ed calling on the Sri Lankan government to move away from austerity-based policies and to mobilize its fiscal and monetary sovereignty to rebuild the country’s productive capacity and to boost recovery efforts after the cyclone’s devastation. This devastation is not unique to Sri Lanka, according to UN Trade & Development, debt service on external public debt alone reached $487 billion in 2023. In Africa, debt service exceeds what countries spent on health and education combined between 2021 and 2023.

A small but important historical note here. When the Global North decided to re-industrialize West Germany after WWII, it orchestrated a major debt cancellation program to write off 50% of Germany’s external debt under the London Debt Accords of 1953 and delivered a real industrialization plan with non-debt inducing financing and transfer of technology etc (I wrote about this here). Sri Lanka, along with many Global South countries contributed to Germany’s debt cancellation. Is it even conceivable today to cancel 50% of any developing country’s external debt? No! We only hear about rescheduling of payments, new loans to pay older loans, and nothing but entrapment. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect Germany’s ministry of finance to reciprocate Sri Lanka’s solidarity today (especially after a major climate disaster induced by Global North historic polluters)? I would hope so, but all signals indicate that none of that is on the horizon.

How to Paralyze a Nation

Sixty years of IMF interventions have systematically avoided the most important “structural adjustment” that Sri Lanka needed, which is to undo 400 years of colonial economic entrapment. If anything, the IMF’s so-called Debt Sustainability Analysis and Structural Adjustment Program have intentionally avoided addressing the structural root causes of external borrowing. If we pay attention to the composition of Sri Lanka’s exports and imports, it becomes very clear that the country has three major structural deficiencies that produce and reproduce the external debt trap: (1) food imports, (2) energy imports, and (3) high value-added manufactured goods (see figures below).

In 2024, Sri Lanka imported $18 billion dollars worth of goods, while it only earned $12 billion in export revenues. This persistent structural current account deficit puts downward pressure on the value of the Sri Lankan rupee relative to the US dollar, the euro and other major currencies. A weaker rupee (see graph below) means that everything the country imports (food, fuel, medicine, etc..) will cost more (imported inflation). The higher cost of living becomes unbearable for the people unless the government intervenes immediately with two basic bandaid solutions. First, the government will be compelled to subsidize basic necessities such as food, fuel, medical services as much as possible, which becomes unsustainable over time. Second, the central bank will intervene in the foreign exchange market to artificially stabilize the exchange rate by borrowing more dollars, thus fueling the debt trap (see graph below).

And the deeper the country goes into this debt trap the harsher the conditionalities imposed by the lenders who now want to prioritize economic activity to service the debt rather than develop the country or to serve the social and economic priorities of its people. Lenders now want less government spending on health and education, and better incentives to attract investors to extract natural resources, export crops, low-cost textiles and manufacturing. All of which reproduces the colonial economic entrapment of 400 years of making Sri Lanka play the role of the provider of cheap raw materials. the consumer (not the producer) of imported industrial products and technologies, the host of low-cost and low-value-added production units that are no longer needed in the industrialized world, therefore locking the country at the bottom of the global value chain with no hope of escaping the debt trap. The same formula is applied repeatedly across the Global South.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

The Needed Structural Transformation

Addressing the root causes of the external debt trap requires strategic investments that enhance Sri Lank’s degree of food sovereignty, energy sovereignty, and industrial capabilities.

Sri Lanka can target fiscal spending (in rupees, not in foreign currencies) to boost domestic production of core food crops (not export crops) and renewable energy. Every metric ton of rice produced locally saves the equivalent amount in dollars that would have been borrowed to import food and the interest paid over many years. Every green kilowatt hour produced domestically saves the equivalent amount in dollars that would have been borrowed to import fuel and the interest paid over many years.

Escaping these structural traps is a very difficult task for a small developing country to do it alone. Regional cooperation, South-South strategic cooperation and South-North solidarity play a fundamental role in the process of structural transformation. Regional cooperation creates tremendous benefits when it leverages the complementarity of resources and capabilities. Not every country can be fully self-sufficient in food and energy production, so collective self-reliance creates a virtuous cycle of win-win partnership opportunities.

Coordinating and negotiating joint procurements from international suppliers allows Sri Lanka and its partners to negotiate steep discounts that produce substantial foreign currency savings. Information sharing about frequently purchased items may reveal common sense joint industrial policies to manufacture frequently imported items. The advantage of joint industrial policies is that it benefits from the necessary economies of scale to reduce the cost per unit, improve quality, efficiency and product competitiveness. This is a game changer that allows Sri Lanka and the rest of the Global South to escape the bottom of the global value chain once and for all.

The stronger the cohesion of regional economic blocs on joint procurements, food and energy policies, and joint industrial policies, the stronger the bargaining position of these blocs in terms of multilateral negotiations on debt, climate, technology transfers, and development finance.

Subscribe now

Reforming the Global Economic “Architecture”

The rules of the global economic “architecture” have imposed on the Global South an economic role that is systematically conducive to unsustainable debt burdens and condemns the Global South to endless economic entrapment. Today, the Global South (including Sri Lanka) plays the role of the place where: 1) the industrialized world acquires cheap raw materials (including critical minerals); 2) industrial output from the Global North can be dumped in a large consumer market; 3) the Global North finds low-cost tourist destinations; and 4) obsolete technologies, and low-tech, low labor-cost, assembly-line manufacturing that is no longer needed in the Global North is outsourced to in the name of “development”, “cooperation”, and “job creation”, which in fact guarantees that the Global South remains locked at the bottom of the global value chain. Therefore, one of the most important aspects of reforming the international financial architecture must be an intentional strategy to rebalance the global economy and to reposition Global South countries away from the bottom of the global value chain.

The biggest mistake that developing countries are currently making when it comes to reforming the global financial “architecture” is to limit the reforms to: demanding a seat at the table, lower cost of capital, a fair credit ratings assessment, more SDR issuance, and better terms that allow for stoping debt service payments during a climate disaster. All of these reforms are helpful, but they are bandaids that do not challenge the existing system.

In short, we need a two-pronged approach to the global economic reform:

Reducing the existing debt burden via a combination of debt cancellations and debt restructuring, and elimination of unjustifiably punitive financing terms; and

Channeling new concessional financing, grants, transfer of technology, and exemptions of intellectual property rights towards strategic sectors of economic transformation (agriculture, energy, higher value-added manufacturing) that target the very sources of external debt.

This two-pronged formula has been successfully implemented by the Global North for geopolitically strategic allies like West Germany, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Taiwan and Singapore. The rest of the Global South has been intentionally excluded from this privilege because its implementation on a large scale would simply mean repositioning the Global South majority at the center (not at the bottom) of a new international economic order that puts to rest once and for all the existing colonial hierarchy.

P.S. A small note here to apologize to all the wonderful architects out there. On behalf of everyone involved in these discussions about reforming the global economic “architecture” which I often describe as violent, unstable, unsustainable, undemocratic, abusive and unjust. It is truly an insult to the world of real architecture which generally symbolizes stability, safety, warmth and beauty. I really wish that my colleagues would borrow more than just the name from your field.

You can follow him on LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Bluesky, YouTube, and TikTok @FadhelKaboub.

Leave a comment

Can COP30 be the COP of Truth?

Fadhel Kaboub — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 07:47:39 GMT

At the end of COP29 in Baku last year, I described the so-called climate finance outcome as “300 Billion Lies and Economic Traps,” and I said that COP29 was not about climate finance. It was not even about climate. It was about a colonial economic and geopolitical hierarchy that refuses to be disrupted, because the kind of transformative climate finance that the Global South was asking for was going to unleash the huge development potential of the Global South, which is home to the youngest labor force in the world, the largest reserves of green transition minerals, and a massive renewable energy potential.

Subscribe now

This week in Belem, Brazil, the host country declared that COP30 will be the COP of Truth. We will find out soon whether that will be the case, but there are already some serious concerns about the quality (not just the quantity) of climate finance. I have warned about carbon markets in the lead up to COP28 in Dubai and described carbon credits (a.k.a. pollution permits) as the most dangerous climate finance “solution.”

Today, we have a wide menu of climate finance false solutions, dangerous distractions, greenwashing neocolonial traps like carbon markets, foreign direct investment, CBAMs (carbon boarder adjustment mechanisms), low-cost labor “green industrial zones”, renewable energy extractivism, blended finance, public-private partnerships (PPPs), de-risked investments, debt for nature swaps, green bonds, etc.

We need real, transformative, just and equitable climate finance solutions that deliver grants (not loans and more economic entrapment), debt cancellation (not debt restructuring and rescheduling), and transfer of life-saving technologies to allow the Global South the manufacture and deploy the clean energy, clean transportation, and clean cooking infrastructure needed to simultaneously decarbonize and decolonize its economic system.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Truth: The Era of Fossil Fuels is Over

The IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2025 (released on Nov. 12) confirms what many of us in the Global South have long known: the fossil-fuel era is ending, not because of political will, but because the economics of renewables is winning. This is very bad news for those who have spent hundreds of billions of dollars in the last decade building oil and gas infrastructure. My advice to pension funds, university endowments, and institutional investors is very straightforward: divest now before the carbon bubble blows up and you’ll be left with nothing but stranded assets.

For Africa, the real question is whether the continent will once again be positioned as a passive supplier of raw materials to fuel other region’s energy transitions—or whether Africans will seize this historic moment to build energy sovereignty, industrial capacity, and climate resilience on our own terms.

Halting new fossil fuel investments is a moral, ecological, and economic imperative. But it must go hand in hand with building the fiscal and technological capacity to invest massively in renewable energy infrastructure, grid modernization, and localized value chains—from solar manufacturing to battery storage capacity production. Africa cannot transition by importing clean technology while exporting its minerals unprocessed; that would reproduce the same colonial dependency under a green label.

To accelerate Africa’s just energy transition, we need a Global Green New Deal that centers Africa and the rest of the Global South: grants, concessional finance without conditionalities, technology transfers, and a coordinated regional industrial policy that links energy, food, and industrial sovereignty. The IEA’s data shows the transition is inevitable; the question is whether it will be just. For Africa, justice means not only powering our homes but also empowering our economies. My colleagues and I have written extensively about this in Just Transition: A Climate, Energy and Development Vision for Africa (2023), and two weeks ago I wrote this piece “Decolonise to Decarbonise,” which is published by the Institute for Strategic and International Studies in Malaysia.

Subscribe now

Only 581 GW of Truth (instead of 1,122 GW)

The 2023 Global Stocktake at COP28 produced the UAE Consensus, which includes the historic commitment to transition away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly, and equitable manner. Central to this agreement are two global energy targets to be achieved by 2030:

Tripling global renewable energy capacity, and
Doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvement.

In 2024, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) was designated as the Custodian Agency responsible for tracking and reporting global progress on these two targets. In preparation for COP30, IRENA release its assessment report, “Delivering on the UAE Consensus: Tracking progress toward tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030.” I will highlight just a few findings here:

In 2024, the world added 581.9 GW of renewable power—the largest annual increase ever. Solar PV (+452 GW) and wind energy (+114.3 GW) accounted for the vast majority of new installations. In order to meet the tripling target of the UAE Consensus, renewable power capacity needs to grow by +1,122 GW per year between 2025–2030, but the current growth rates are insufficient to stay on track.
Sadly, this growth in renewables is highly uneven: Asia, Europe, and North America account for 85.4% of total installed renewable capacity; the rest of the world only 14.6%. And more importantly, 91% of newly added renewable energy capacity delivers electricity cheaper than new fossil fuel generation.

On the energy efficiency front, global energy intensity improved by 1% between 2023–2024—far below the pace needed to double efficiency, and global building renovation rate remains just 1% of building stock. The IRENA report makes it very clear that achieving renewable and efficiency goals will require massive increases in climate finance: LDCs require more than $116 billion; SIDS needs $6.1 billion, and Sub-Saharan Africa requires $113 billion to meet their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) energy targets.

Overall, the IRENA report concludes that tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency by 2030 remain technically achievable, but only if the annual renewable additions accelerate dramatically, energy efficiency efforts increase several-fold, infrastructure and workforce constraints are addressed, and the international system delivers substantially greater and more accessible finance. All of this is technically possible. That is the Truth, but the question is whether the political leaders at COP30 will deliver what is truly possible.

Truth: Africa is a Renewables Powerhouse

Many of you have heard me refer to IRENA’s 2021 report “The renewable energy transition in Africa: Powering access, resilience and prosperity.” Let me quote directly from the executive summary on page 5:

“Africa’s estimated potential to generate renewable energy from existing technologies is 1,000 times larger than its projected demand for electricity in 2040, which means that the continent has more than enough renewable energy potential to serve its future demand. Furthermore, renewable energy – including green hydrogen – could replace African exports of coal, oil and gas.”

And yet, Africa is still denied access to financing and to the technology to manufacture and deploy renewables at scale. This is not a design flaw; it’s a colonial design feature.

To close, let me share a brief clip of my remarks at the IRENA Innovation Week 2025 in Bonn, Germany (June 2025), in which I explain why it’s important to shift the narrative about climate finance and what needs to be done to unleash transformative climate action in the Global South. Here is the full summary report from IRENA’s Innovation Week 2025.

At that closing session, I was asked what would be my suggestion for Global South countries in preparation for COP30. Here is what I said back in June.

My tongue-in-cheek suggestion for Global South countries going to COP30 in Belem is, instead of sending hundreds of diplomats, negotiators, climate finance experts, and civil society groups, why not send a very small delegation of say ten people representing different constituencies from the Global South, headed by an elder from an indigenous community. The delegation would have a short list of climate action demands that can fit on a single piece of paper.

You can picture the scene of the Global South delegation entering a small negotiation room, sitting across the table from representatives from the historic polluters of the Global North. Imagine a scene with dramatic music playing in the background when the Global South delegation pull out a single piece of paper folded in half, give it to the elder heading the delegation who will briefly unfold it for a quick look, then fold it back and slowly slide it across the table while locking the most intense and intimidating eye contact with her counterpart across the table representing the Global North. You can imagine the rest of the scene, but the substance of the Global South demands for climate action are very straight forward:

Transfer of life-saving technologies for green joint-industrial policies in the Global South to replicate the entire value chain for manufacturing and deploying renewable energy, clean cooking, and clean public transportation infrastructure.
Cancel all climate-induced debts incurred by the Global South.
Fund the Loss & Damage Fund with a minimum of $1 trillion of grant-based financing that must be replenished continuously as a buffer to be deployed immediately after climate-induced disasters.
Provide grants (not loans) for strategic investments in regional food sovereignty and agroecology.
Stop all fossil fuel expansion plans, and rapidly phase out all existing coal, oil, and gas infrastructure under a just transition framework as suggested by the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.
Stop promoting market-based false solutions and dangerous distractions such as solar geoengineering, pollution permits (a.k.a. carbon credits), and carbon capture and sequestration.

The pathway outlined above is not only climate action but is also a transformative development framework that will inevitably disrupt the existing global economic and geopolitical hierarchy in which the Global South is currently locked at the bottom of the economic hierarchy. However, what is proposed here is to use the climate crisis moment to say that we cannot decarbonize a system that hasn’t been structurally and economically decolonized yet. In other words, this is an opportunity to reposition the global majority at the center of a new multipolar international economic order of peace, justice, and sustainable prosperity for all.

Thanks for reading Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Don’t miss this webinar “A World in Chaos” on Sunday Nov. 16. RSVP here: https://shorturl.at/X8cyg

Join us next week in Mexico City at UNAM: November 20th and 21st, 2025.

Subscribe now

Fadhel Kaboub is a Tunisian-American economist. He is an associate professor of economics at Denison University, and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is the author of Global South Perspectives on substack. He is a board member of the United Nations High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs at UN-DESA. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, a member of the Earth4All 21st Century Transformational Economics Commission, a Steering Committee member with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, and a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition Finance. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), African Forum on Climate Change, Energy and Development (Abuja), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). Dr. Kaboub is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively called The Geopolitical Bargain of the Century: Towards a New International Economic Order of Peace, Justice, and Sustainable Prosperity (forthcoming).

A Wake for a Dying System

Fadhel Kaboub — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 03:30:33 GMT

Greetings from Tunis!

This week's gathering in Washington DC for the annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF should be a wake for a dying global economic architecture, but unfortunately, a New International Economic Order cannot be born without African leadership to reposition the continent and the rest of the Global South away from the bottom of the global value chain. This is what I told the BBC Newsday on Monday. Click the image below to listen to the full interview.

Subscribe now

Global South Debtors’ Coalition

I am very excited to share this co-authored paper with my colleague Andrés Chiriboga, which we published with the Institute For Economic Justice (IEJ) in South Africa. "A Coherent Framework for Sovereign Debt and Economic Transformation: Towards a Global South Debtors’ Club"

Abstract: Sovereign debt crises in the Global South are not isolated economic mishaps — they are structural features of a global economic system rooted in colonial legacies and sustained through dependency. This working paper from the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ) challenges the narrative that current debt restructuring mechanisms, like the G20’s Common Framework or the Debt Service Suspension Initiative, can solve the crisis. These initiatives fail to address the structural roots of indebtedness, treating it as a liquidity problem rather than a deeper issue of trade imbalances, resource extraction, and economic subordination.

Debt, the paper argues, is a tool of neocolonial control — used by creditor nations and international financial institutions to keep the Global South locked into roles of resource extraction and low-value production. From Haiti’s independence debt to the modern debt burdens across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, sovereign debt has maintained economic hierarchies established during colonialism.

The paper proposes the formation of a Global South Debtors’ Coalition — a transformative platform for coordinated negotiation and collective economic planning. Learning from past coordination efforts like the Cartagena Initiative, it outlines strategies for building effective and lasting debtor alliances.

Central to this framework are three interlinked priorities: food sovereignty, energy independence, and industrial policy. The paper calls for strategic regional investments that can break the cycle of dependency and unlock long-term development.

A bold proposal — the “Bargain of the Century” — suggests leveraging the Global South’s collective market size, natural resources, and labour force to demand fairer trade, technology transfers, and investment. With South Africa holding the G20 Presidency and the FfD4 approaching, there is a real opportunity to push for a new, just, and multipolar international economic order.

This paper is a call to action: for debt justice, economic sovereignty, and a transformation agenda rooted in equity and sustainability.

ChangeNow Summit in Paris

I am on my way to Paris to speak on three panels in the next three days and to engage with some of the 40,000 climate change thinkers and organizers who will be attending the summit ten years after the Paris Agreement was reached.

The first panel I’ll be on is called Negotiating the Future. Here is the description:

"Negotiating our Future" will highlight the transformative shifts that must take place in international negotiations and the Bretton Woods Institutions to meet 21st challenges. It will explore the urgent need to center science and evidence-based decision-making while adapting international negotiations such as the COP framework and the Beyond Bretton Woods institutions . As the global landscape continues to evolve rapidly, it is essential to embrace negotiation and institutional frameworks that uphold human and planetary values, and take into consideration holistic systemic solutions with a particular emphasis on equity, well being, justice, and sustainable development for all. To truly build a better future, we must not only rethink how we engage in these discussions, and structure negotiations, but also reflect on how best to design future proof multilateral institutions and negotiations that are more inclusive of diverse voices and take into consideration the needs of the worlds most vulnerable, indigenous communities and our future planetary stewards "the youth". It is time to drive reforms to reflect today's turbulent poly crisis world and current attempts by the Trump administration to dismantle multilateralism and the rule of law. This calls for a global reaffirmation of the need for robust and inclusive international frameworks that foster peace, prosperity, and planetary stability but also enables a deep re-think of what multilateralism means in today's world. This session will reaffirm the need for multilateralism whilst exploring future institutional and negotiating scenarios that offer a brighter and more resilient future.”

The Second panel is called “Financing a Just Transition”

“This conference will address the urgent need to transform the global financial system for a fair and effective response to the climate crisis. Experts will examine how economic policies can align with nature’s limits while acknowledging the historical responsibilities of high-emission countries. Discussions will focus on concrete measures such as alleviating global debt in the Global South, reducing financial dependency, reforming taxation, and implementing structural changes to decolonize financial mechanisms. The session will highlight how financial decision-making impacts ecosystems and communities, aiming to shape a more regenerative, equity-driven financial model that serves both people and the planet.”

And the final session is called “Youth Parliament for a Well-Being Economy”

“The Youth Parliament for a Well-Being Economy is a groundbreaking session at ChangeNOW, co-created with young leaders to redefine economic priorities for a just and regenerative future. In a dynamic, hemicycle-style debate, experts and youth representatives will present six bold proposals for a well-being economy, with the audience voting on the top three priorities to be delivered to the UN Youth Office—shaping a youth-driven roadmap for COP30!”

I’m super excited to have these conversations!

Subscribe now

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University, and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is the author of Global South Perspectives on substack. He is a member of the United Nations High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs at UN-DESA. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, a member of the Earth4All 21st Century Transformational Economics Commission, a Steering Committee member with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, and a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition Finance. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), African Forum on Climate Change, Energy and Development (Abuja), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). Dr. Kaboub is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively called The Geopolitical Bargain of the Century: Towards a New International Economic Order of Peace, Justice, and Sustainable Prosperity (forthcoming 2025). You can follow him on LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Bluesky, YouTube, and TikTok @FadhelKaboub.

Longing for Genuine Global Solidarity

Fadhel Kaboub — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 09:05:12 GMT

In a time of heightened geopolitical tensions, conflicts, genocides, systemic injustice, and ecological collapse, the call for global solidarity has never been more urgent. Sometimes, we feel overwhelmed, paralyzed, and stuck in a rot of despair and inaction. Instead of writing another analytical piece, I decided to rewrite this older poem hoping to inspire all of us to find some hope and courage, and to trigger the urge to act. I also asked one of my mentors, Rajani Kanth, who, unlike me, is a real poet and one of the best political economists I’ve ever known, to smooth out some rough edges in my writing. I’m always grateful for his thoughtful input. You should all follow and read his work here. Poetry is healing for the soul. And music adds some fun to it, which I did with the help of AI here. I hope you enjoy it.

The mighty boabab tree. Photo by deshawn wilson on Unsplash

At the end of this post, you will find two things: 1/ I played around with an AI tool called Suno to produce a song with this poem. It was fun, so I’m sharing a couple of samples here, and 2/ I’m sharing a short clip about why we read and write poetry from the 1989 film Dead Poets Society. Coincidently, the main character played by Robin Williams is inspired by the late Denison professor Don Consolo. You can read about his life and work here.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Finally, you’ll notice that I have turned on the “paid subscription” option on my substack after so many of you have voluntarily pledged to purchase a paid subscription. Don’t worry, this substack will remain free for all readers. I appreciate your generous support. I am committed to continuing this work and sharing it as broadly as possibly across the Global South. All the content will remain free. I will only ask for contributions on a voluntary basis to support the pro bono work I am doing with Global South nonprofits, civil society organizations, and governments.

Subscribe now

Longing for Genuine Global Solidarity

By Fadhel Kaboub

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

You know that Green New Deal 
by Ed Markey and AOC?
it needs to be a Global GND.
Just read the document from the IPCC,
It’s gloomy as hell, but that’s reality.

Our plan must be global, 
with reparations for the tragedy
of ecological damage and colonial atrocity.

They destroyed the evidence,
erased our African history,
but little do they know, 
our witness is alive! 
It's the mighty baobab tree.

They even renamed Nam Lolwe Lake Victoria 
to blur our very own memory,
but its endless bounty traveled to the Nile, 
to share its Pan-African (his)story. 

Ask Mount Kilimanjaro, say
“what did you see?”
The giant whispers a gentle tone 
of harmony,

Millions of people want to live freely,
with justice, peace, and prosperity, 

They want dignity and hope, not your charity.
Clean water, clean air, clean soil, 
that’s not at all a fantasy.

No more hunger and bread riots, 
But real food sovereignty.
No more darkness nor smog, 
Just clean energy sovereignty.

We’ll use the sun, the wind, the tides, 
and even volcanic energy.

We’ll end the pain, and suffering, 
And build a circular economy.
And change the metric to guide 
public policy.

We’ll have genuine progress, 
focused on quality of life,
not some useless GDP.

It won’t be easy, cheap, 
or enemy-free.
The naysayers will scream, 
“the deficit, the debt, OMG it’s inflationary!”

Little do they know, 
we have plenty of productive capacity.
We’ll build ever more with a 
green Pan-African industrial strategy.

We’ll go after price-setters, cartels, and every monopoly.
Decolonize Congo, Sudan, 
and every Global South territory.

From Cape to Cairo, 
from Morocco to Malagasy,
Freedom for all Africans 
to roam their land, visa-free.
Utopian, naive, radical; they say? 
I dare them to try and stop me,

Amandla Awethu! 
It’s my agenda, and my people will get there
long, long before 2063.

We’ll fight corruption, greed, 
end the oligarchy.
We will have a brand new world,
even in Washington DC,
with 535 lawmakers, 
a true participatory democracy,

a government of the people, 
by the people, for the people, 
like it was supposed to be.

We’ll tax polluters, speculators, 
and the oligarchs; you see,
not because we need their money, or their permission 
to have an equitable society,

but because we need to decarbonize 
and fight inequality.
It’s the only way forward. 
I won’t settle for insanity.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Don’t distract my people 
with conspiracy theory,
Qanon, Rothschilds, gold bugs, 
or a new kind of cryptocurrency.

Let’s stick to the facts, 
history, science,
and integrity.

Remember Sankara, 
Lumumba, Nkrumah, 
and Nyerere,

Pan-Africanism is our 
very own destiny.
It’s a paradigm shift, 
don’t you see?
It changes the narrative, 
and it ends all talk of 
austerity.

A new world is possible, 
without artificial scarcity.
No unemployment
or poverty 
with our jobs guarantee,

Decent wages, benefits, 
and all needs covered 
as necessary.

We’ll make those jobs green,
focused on a care economy.
We’ll care for the planet, 
children, and the elderly.

Every living thing, 
every drop of water, 
every inch of soil,
is our very own responsibility.

Every source of life 
is ever so precious; 
a gift in our custody, 
not some kind of private property.

I’m taking this global 
Climate Action plan
very very seriously,
because I don’t want to 
end up 
a climate refugee.

So join me in this struggle, 
it’s my final plea.

Humanity is longing 
for true solidarity.
I’ll die trying if I have to, 
for this better future is 
within reach, 
and it’s yearning 
to be set free.

An AI-generated song with the lyrics from this poem. I put together a couple of different versions here. Enjoy!

And here is the bit about why we read and write poetry. A clip from the Dead Poets Society (1989). In this scene, John Keating (Robin Williams) explains to his students why we read and write poetry. He quotes Whitman's Leaves of Grass:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined; 
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? 

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

That is it, my friends. So, what will your verse be?

Leave a comment

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University, and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is the author of Global South Perspectives on substack. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, a member of the Earth4All 21st Century Transformational Economics Commission, a Steering Committee member with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, and a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition Finance. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), African Forum on Climate Change, Energy and Development (Abuja), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). You can follow him on LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Bluesky, YouTube, and TikTok @FadhelKaboub.

Can BRICS Create a Multipolar World?

Fadhel Kaboub — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 16:18:28 GMT

I’m often asked whether BRICS is going to be the game-changer that will disrupt the current geopolitical hierarchy, dedollarize the system, and create a new multipolar word. My position has always been that we can’t dedollarize a system that hasn’t been structurally decolonized yet, and that no new multipolar world can be born without Africa and the rest of the Global South being repositioned away from the bottom of the global hierarchy and at the center of a New International Economic Order. I explained this on CGTN Africa recently when we discussed the outcomes of the 2024 BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia (read the Kazan Declaration). The gist of my argument is in this 2-minute clip below, but you can watch the full interview here.

Subscribe now

For the Global North, the biggest perceived threat to its dominant geopolitical position (sadly) is not terrorism, nuclear weapons, the misuse of AI, cyber crimes, inflation, climate change, pandemics, mass migration, genocides, or even BRICS at this point... but rather the real industrialization of a united Global South block positioned at the center of a multipolar world — and a New International Economic Order, because it will permanently undo the colonial hierarchy upon which the Global North thrives, and it will fully unleash the massive potential for development and prosperity that we have in the Global South. That is why, unfortunately, we continue to be denied the right to development, the right to structural transformation, the right to decolonize our economies, the right to enjoy the fruits of sustainable prosperity. And while we are now sitting at the table rather than being on the menu, we are now supposed to chose from a menu of the tranquilizing drugs of gradualism, incrementalism, false solutions, and dangerous distractions (to paraphrase the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.). I discussed this last week in my COP29 reflection, which you can read here, and in this recent interview on News Central TV in Nigeria.

Does BRICS have what it takes?

The recent BRICS summit in Russia offered a symbolic counter-narrative to the isolation of Russia following Western sanctions. Instead of standing alone, Russia presented itself as part of a larger coalition seeking a new vision for a multipolar world. This gathering highlighted that Russia is not isolated but, in fact, integrated into a broader economic system that challenges traditional power dynamics — central to it, is the role of the Global South, or rather the Global Majority, in creating a new international economic order.

However, while the aspirations for a multipolar world were palpable, the clarity of vision regarding practical steps remains elusive. The necessary actions to reshape the global economy and shift away from dollar dependency are not yet fully articulated. Particularly from an African perspective, the continent's growing presence in BRICS does not yet translate into a concrete strategy for leveraging this new economic relationship to foster genuine transformation.

As BRICS commemorated its 16th summit, it was vital to evaluate the progress made over the years. While there is talk about developing an alternative currency to replace the dollar, Professor Kaboub contended that focusing solely on currency is misguided. Having a national currency does not equate to economic sovereignty or transformation. For instance, Kenya may have its own currency, but it does not guarantee substantial economic independence.

Historically, Africa has been relegated to a role defined by colonial legacies: a supplier of cheap raw materials, a consumer of industrialized goods from the Global North, and a destination for outdated technologies. Until BRICS and its member countries address these structural colonial traps, the continent will struggle to participate fully in the emerging multipolar world.

Subscribe now

Decolonize to Dedollarize!

You can’t dedollarize a system that hasn’t been structurally and economically decolonized yet. Dedollarization cannot be declared into existence by a presidential decree or via a BRICS declaration. Dedollarization doesn’t require the creation of a new currency (certainly not a currency backed by gold or oil). Dedollarization is achieved via strategic investments aimed at enhancing economic and monetary sovereignty at the national level or at the regional level (a block of countries investing in collective self-reliance). Dedollarization is built on a three-legged stool of food sovereignty, energy sovereignty, and industrial/technological sovereignty. If BRICS is going to dedollarize, it must reconsider its mercantilist motivations and start focusing on strategic cooperation to structurally decolonize the economies of its member states rather than trying to reproduce the same economic and geopolitical hierarchies of the existing system within BRICS itself. Below is a 10-minute intervention I made last year when there was a lot of excitement about BRICS+ leading a dedollarization process. This conversation was hosted by my dear colleague Patrick Bond who also insisted that I must write this blog. I couldn’t say no. Take a listen.

I also had the pleasure recently to go on The LNN Show with Lynn Ngugi to discuss a variety of issues around economic and structural decolonization in Africa. You can watch the entire interview here. Here is the clip about why transforming BRICS requires African leadership to strike what I call the Bargain of the Century to reposition Africa and the rest of the Global South at the center of a new multipolar world of peace, justice, and sustainable prosperity, which I described in my blog last week. Take a listen.

More than just a payment system

Merely establishing an alternative payment system does not confer true economic sovereignty. To move beyond dependency on the global financial system, Africa needs strategic investments in key sectors, such as food and energy sovereignty, as well as technological independence. An alternative payment system must be complemented by alternative shipping, logistics, insurance, finance, and legal systems that form the core of a new global economic architecture designed by the Global Majority on terms that are just and equitable.

This alternative global economic architecture will not build itself, and it cannot be born from the existing colonial and post-colonial architecture. It needs to be designed and built intentionally. Therefore, key to building this new economic architecture are joint industrial policies. And Africa has the most promising industrialization potential, especially considering its vast resources, the complementarity of resources and capabilities among its countries, the economies of scale that it enjoys, and its young labor force. Yet, the realization of this potential requires a collaborative effort, particularly with BRICS nations, to share technology and foster joint industrial policies. Such a framework would enable African countries to produce essential goods within the continent, reducing reliance on external powers and enhancing regional economic autonomy.

Subscribe now

A Call for Strategic Transformation

Looking to the future, the expansion of BRICS to include new emerging economies raises questions about the balance of power within the group. While the inclusion of new members may diversify perspectives, the existing agenda remains largely dominated by a few major players. Furthermore, the larger the BRICS block gets, the more difficult it becomes to make joint declarations with strategic impact for the entire block. At the end of the day, BRICS countries are still competing with each other while trying to cooperate on areas of mutual benefits. Unless BRICS succeeds in clearly defining an overarching cooperation strategy that produces a much larger win-win impact for all of its members, then BRICS will continue to operate as a mercantilist block of competitors who happen to have good aspirations for a multipolar world that cannot be born out of competition.

Therefore, Africa must take responsibility for defining its own path, rather than waiting for external entities like BRICS or G20 to deliver solutions. If Africa doesn’t have a vision for itself, it will continue to be part of a G20, BRICS, EU, US, and other major player’s vision. This was the point of departure that led to the publication of the Just Transition report.

The African Union and its member states need to convene serious discussions focused on structural transformation that aligns with the continent's aspirations. By proactively designing a long-term strategic vision, Africa can ensure that its voice and needs are not merely an afterthought in the conversations led by BRICS or the G20. African leaders must also acknowledge the fact that Agenda 2063 remains a document that cannot be activated without a political commitment in Africa and a geopolitical leverage vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

As discussions about a multipolar world continue, it is crucial for African nations to assert their agency and reimagine their roles within the global economic landscape. By fostering genuine partnerships based on shared goals and mutual benefits, Africa can navigate the complexities of a changing world and emerge as a key player in shaping its future.

Another World is Possible

A few months ago, I recorded a long interview in Nairobi for a documentary series called Another World is Possible. This is a brief 15-minute preview of the longer interview in which I explain what I call The Zero-Dollar Pan-African joint industrial policies. In short, it is the core of the dedollarization process. The series is the work of Zachary Marlow who is an independent filmmaker, activist, and renegade economist. This series has been shot entirely independently over five years, with a near zero budget, only made possible by crowdfunding and a lot of gumption. It is in production on the final act and seeking producers, funders and high level collaborators to bring home the story of how we came together to save the planet.

And they said the revolution won't be televised; I beg to differ. In the words of Gil Scott-Heron, the revolution will be live! Check it out 👇🏼

Zachary Marlow describes the series as follows:

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE is an epic film series breaking down our global interconnected crisis to expose the economic SYSTEM at the root, and blow past it with a globetrotting exploration of new paradigms, radical voices and living alternatives creating a blueprint for planetary transformation. Shot on four continents and counting, chronicling protests to professors, bringing together science and indigenous wisdom, technology and nature based solutions, telling the history of how we got here, the history of money and creating a visionary blueprint to a regenerative future of abundance for all, with a practical roadmap to a viable bottom up cooperative transition system we can step into today.

You can contact Zachary Marlow to get involved at zacharycmarlow@gmail.com or donate directly here.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is the author of Global South Perspectives on substack. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, a member of the Earth4All 21st Century Transformational Economics Commission, a Steering Committee member with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, and a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition Finance. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), African Forum on Climate Change, Energy and Development (Abuja), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). He is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya and is working on climate finance and development policies in Africa. You can follow him on LinkedIn, YouTube, X/Twitter, and Bluesky @FadhelKaboub.

Leave a comment

COP29 wasn't about Climate

Fadhel Kaboub — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 17:06:41 GMT

We spent the last two weeks at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan at what was supposed to be The Climate Finance COP, but the United States and the rest of the Global North showed up empty handed with an intentional agenda of delaying, denying, distracting, blaming the victims, and greenwashing economic traps. In the end, COP29 was not about climate, it was about an economic and geopolitical hierarchy that is not supposed to be disturbed. Why? Because real climate action would imply that climate finance is development finance. Real climate action means high quality transformative climate finance in the form of grants (not loans), cancellation of all climate-related debts (not rescheduling), and the sharing/transfer of life-saving technologies to allow the Global South to manufacture and deploy the building blocks of climate resilience and adaptation; and that would unleash the full potential of the Global South as an economic powerhouse that is no longer locked at the bottom of the economic and geopolitical hierarchy (as outlined in our Just Transition report). And that potential is perceived by the Global North as a threat to be managed and eliminated, not as an opportunity for development and climate action. Unless the Global South recognizes that we need to create a geopolitical leverage to pressure the historic polluters to act differently, we will continue to lose in every single multilateral space whether it’s about climate, debt, trade, investment, taxation, finance, technology, or peace & security negotiations.

Subscribe now

#PayUp Your Climate Debt

The historic polluters have shown that they came to Baku to intentionally mislead and derail the entire process. This was a climate finance COP and they waited until the last official day of the COP to reveal their climate finance NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance) when, in fact, it should have been announced on Day One so we can start the actual negotiations. They kept using the bracketed term "X trillion" in the draft text, only to go back to the small billions and announce the $250 billion in low-quality finance, which they eventually increased to $300 billion, which is nowhere near the $5 trillion that climate finance experts and civil society groups have suggested, or the more modest $1.3 trillion that the Africa Group of Negotiators (AGN) asked for, or the $1.1 trillion that the Arab Group asked for, or the $1 trillion that the LMDC Group asked for. In other words, we said from the beginning, if the NCQG number doesn’t have a T as in trillion next to it, then it’s not good enough, and if the text doesn’t use the word “provide” (aka grants) not “mobilize” (aka loans), then it’s not good enough.

As I have explained before, the Global South is not asking for charity and is not playing the victim. We are demanding payments for a legitimate climate debt (read my post here) and what my argument below in this recent Bad Faith podcast (full interview is available here). It’s very simple, you exceed your carbon budget, you have appropriated the atmospheric space from other nations, therefore, you owe a climate debt.

The $1.3 trillion per year that the Global South asked for is meant to be a modest and reasonable good faith downpayment towards real climate action by the Global North. The fact that the historic polluters are only going to mobilize (not even provide) $300 billion by 2035 in poor quality financing (aka economic entrapment & market-based false solutions) is disgraceful. For the Global South, climate finance needs to come in the form of grants (not loans and further economic entrapment), cancellation of all climate-related debts, and transfer and sharing of life-saving technologies to manufacture and deploy renewables, clean cooking, clean transportation, and the climate resilience and adaptation infrastructure that we need. What the Global North is offering is not just a joke, it is an insult to all the delegations present at COP29, and symbolizes how unserious they are about the climate crisis. Let's remember that the United States alone gifted the equivalent of $1.3 trillion in today's money via the Marshall plan after a very expensive WWII and a Great Depression (read this for background). The U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world can surely afford more than that to pay for the climate crisis they created. In fact, a recent report demonstrates that the historic polluters can indeed provide $5 trillion per year for climate finance.

100 Million Global South Workers

More than 100 Global South Trade Unions representing more than 100 million workers signed a joint declaration at COP29 saying that climate finance must reclaim and restore public assets and services, calling for a just and equitable transition, and supporting the $5 trillion/year #PayUp campaign. Read the full declaration here and watch the press conference recording from Baku here. This is an explicit call to fight against the “Privatize to Decarbonize” neocolonial model that is being forced on so many countries in the Global South (including via the JETPs program). To lear more about this, please follow the work of our colleagues at Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED). I will post more on this subject soon.

Subscribe now

Global North Coercion

Instead of delivering real climate solutions at COP29, the historic polluters led by the United States decided to use their economic and geopolitical weight to force a last minute agreement on the final text without allowing even for a debate or objections. As was made very clear by India and Nigeria, there was no consensus on the final text. it was pure bullying by the historic polluters. I joined hundreds of climate activists in Baku and around the world to call on all Global South delegations to stand strong, stand united, be firm, and be ready to walk out if necessary. We said it loudly and clearly: No Deal is Better than a Bad Deal. Yet, despite the brave resistance of our negotiators, including the LDC and AOSIS groups that actually walked out at some point during the negotiations, we saw a classic power play behind closed doors, backroom dealings, pressure to compromise, calls to capitals to override negotiators in Baku, and the surprise gaveling through of a final text that many Global South countries actually wanted to object to.

Subscribe now

Let there be no doubt that the deepening of the climate crisis is the responsibility of the Global North. The failure of COP29 to deliver real climate action is the sole responsibility of the Global North. And let's remember that this was the Biden-Harris administration leading the US delegation, not the Trump administration. The Biden-Harris administration is not only funding a genocide against the people of Palestine, but it was also actively and intentionally waging a climate war against the entire Global South at COP29.

300 Billion Lies & Economic Traps

You will hear a lot talk about the so-called “tripling” of climate finance at COP29 from the original $100 billion as the Global North will continue to spin the narrative about its commitment to climate action. The mobilization of $300 billion/year by 2035 is a misleading figure. Even with a very conservative inflation rate of 5%, the net present value of $300 billion mobilized in 2035 would be worth approximately $175 billion in 2024 dollars. Just for reference, African countries are paying $163 billion in debt service this year alone. Now, let that sink in! That is how serious the Global North is about climate action.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

COP29 also delivered the weakest form of climate finance, meaning it is going to be more of the same: pollution permits (aka carbon credits) to greenwash emissions in the Global North (read my blog on this), loans for further economic entrapment (not grants), de-risking of private sector investments, and more market-based false solutions. Let me focus here for a minute on what I think is going to be one of the most dangerous climate finance combinations for the next decade, the so-called “Global Investment Goal” and CBAM regulations (CBAM is the EU’s Carbon Boarder Adjustment Mechanism).

I explain it in the above interview in less than 3 minutes, but here is the gist of it. We are going to see CBAM-like regulations across the Global North soon, coupled with private sector “climate finance” flooding the Global South to build green “industrial zones”. Then we will see a wave of outsourcing of obsolete technologies and assembly line manufacturing that is no longer needed in the Global North. Green products will be assembled with low-cost labor and low-cost green energy in the Global South, then shipped to consumers in the North. The outcomes of this deadly combination are:

This is an inflation management tool for Global North countries (keeping the cost of their products low, avoiding the carbon tariffs etc.)
This is a trade weapon against the Global North competitors who don’t have green industrial zones in the South yet; and
This locks the Global South again at the bottom of the global value chain.

In other words, this is a greenwash, rinse and repeat of the same old colonial hierarchy that is not supposed to be disrupted.

Subscribe now

Finally, COP29 reinforces the role of the multilateral development banks (MDBs) such as the World Bank, which is notorious for its failure to deliver on any of its stated objectives. The fact the most countries that follow the economic prescriptions and conditionalities imposed by the MDBs are in debt traps today means one of two things; either these MDBs are incompetent, or they are engaged in intentional economic entrapment. And when the largest shareholders in a bank (in this case it’s the historic polluters present at COP29) conspire with and cover up for senior management to bankrupt their own clients, we call that financial fraud and embezzlement, but for the colonial financial architecture it is business as usual, and COP29 was yet another opportunity for the Global North to reinforce its hegemony via the MDBs. Allow me to explain in a 2m25s comment I made at the 2024 Social Forum at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva earlier this month.

The Road the Belem COP30

Here is the thing, the Global North knows very well that real transformative climate finance will actually unleash a tremendous development potential in the Global South, and that will disrupt the global economic and geopolitical hierarchy, which is unacceptable for the Global North. That is the bottom line. It's a colonial mentality dressed up in greenwashed diplomatic violence against the global majority.

We are the global majority. We can leverage the complementarity of our resources and capabilities to impose a new international economic order of justice, peace, and prosperity. If the historic polluters of the global minority do not get serious about its responsibilities, then we may have to start restricting access to our strategic minerals and our markets, and start leveraging our collective economic weight to save the planet for all of humanity.

No progress will be made in COP30 next year in Belem unless the Global South creates the geopolitical leverage it needs to level the playing field in all multilateral negotiations. I will write a blog soon about this strategy, but here is what I call the Bargain of the Century, which is designed to reposition the Global South at the center of a new International Economic Order of peace and sustainable prosperity. I explain it here in 7 minutes. Take a listen!

Stay tuned for more blogs soon on COP29 and the road ahead!

Leave a comment

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is the author of Global South Perspectives on substack. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, a member of the Earth4All 21st Century Transformational Economics Commission, a Steering Committee member with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, a member of the African Forum on Climate Change, Energy and Development, a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition Finance, and serves as senior advisor with Power Shift Africa. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), Africa’s Forum on Climate Change, Energy and Development (Abuja), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). He is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya and is working on climate finance and development policies in Africa. You can follow him on LinkedIn, YouTube, X/Twitter, and Bluesky @FadhelKaboub.

A New International Economic Order

Fadhel Kaboub — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 18:14:16 GMT

Greetings from Shanghai!

This (long) post will encompass some brief comments and updates from my recent work, and will be followed by more detailed notes in the next few weeks. First, I spent the last few days in Shanghai, China lecturing at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai (July 8-23). The program is aimed for Ph.D. students, post-docs, and early career professionals who are entering academia and public policy government positions. This year’s theme is “Public Indebtedness and the Future of Human Development.” I spent close to six hours (split over two days) presenting “Global South Debt & Development: A Strategic Repositioning in a Multipolar World of Peace & Sustainable Prosperity,” and engaging in the most thoughtful discussions with 120 of the sharpest young minds in China. The future of the Global South is brighter. I will write more about this soon. Next, I will briefly highlight some recent events in Nairobi, Tegucigalpa, Tunis, and Havana.

Subscribe now

Kenyans reject the 2024 Finance Bill

Nairobi has seen major protests over the last few weeks as a reaction to the withdrawn 2024 Finance Bill that was going to impose higher taxes and severe austerity measures while expending budget for government officials and their spouses. I published this op-ed in The Guardian explaining the role of the IMF in Kenya’s structural debt Crisis. When you read this op-ed you might find the following charts useful in reference to Kenya’s structural deficiencies and how they lead to currency depreciation and an exponential increase in external debt (these slides are from a recent presentation at The University of Nairobi). And yes, corruption does matter, of course, but it is not the root cause of Kenya’s debt crisis. The first slide shows Kenya’s exports, the second is Kenya’s imports (so you can eyeball the composition of each), and the 3rd and 4th slides are labeled below).

I would also encourage you to read this excellent op-ed in The Guardian by Nanjala Nyabola as well as this joint civil society statement organized by Tax Justice Network Africa and this solidarity statement from AFRODAD. Finally, below is the link to a recent interview I did with CGTN-Africa about the 2024 Finance Bill.

Honduras is Fighting for Tax Justice

It was an honor to join the Government of President Xiomara Castro who convened a special summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Tegucigalpa, Honduras (June 27-29), to commemorate the 2009 coup, celebrate the enduring resistance of the Honduran people, and strengthen the hemispheric coalition in defense of popular sovereignty. Honduras is not only fighting to restore and strengthen its democracy, peace, and security, but also to rid itself of some of the most abusive rules of the global economic system.

One of the boldest moves by President Xiomara Castro’s administration was withdrawing from the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). ICSID and other so-called international arbitration platforms are court-like private venues that multinational corporations use to force sovereign states (mostly in the Global South) to pay punitive compensations for the hypothetical unrealized profits they they claim to have lost because of public policies that advance the welfare of consumers, workers or the environment. In Latin America alone, more than $30 billion has been transferred from countries to corporations through these courts; not to mention the millions of lives negatively affected by governments not acting to serve the interest of their people when they fear the wrath of these undemocratic “courts” of neocolonial abuse. To learn more about the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) threat to sovereignty and prosperity in the Global South, you can read this, this, and this. What Honduras is doing is nothing short of establishing a pathway for the rest of the Global South to finally decolonize the global economic architecture.

Honduras has also introduced a draft Tax Justice Law that seeks to tackle tax evasion, harmful tax incentives, and banking secrecy, but it has faced strong opposition from right-wing groups who are keen to maintain the tax advantages they currently enjoy. While in Tegucigalpa, I joined H.E. Mr. Marlon Ochoa (Minster of Finance of Honduras) and my colleagues Attiya Waris, Maria Luisa Ortega, Jorge Coronado, and Matti Kohonen on a panel discussion titled “Tax Justice: The Fight against Transnational Oligarchy.” I delivered two key messages on that panel.

First, while we continue to fight for a more just international tax system that goes after speculators, polluters, and the oligarchs, we must not lose sight of the importance of regulation that targets the roots of this abusive, extractive, and unjust system. In other words, we must both Tax & Regulate the unjust system out of existence, rather than just tax bad behavior for the purpose of collecting tax revenues to fund good programs.

Second, we must move away from a system of fiscal “redistribution” to a system of “pre-distribution.” In other words, a structural system redesign that replaces the engines of inequality, pollution, speculation, and socioeconomic exclusion, with engines that produce - by design - more just, equitable, and sustainable outcomes for all.

The visit included a closed-door conversation with senior officials in the Honduran government including several ministers and vice-minsters, and concluded with a dinner and a meeting at the Presidential Palace with President Xiomara Castro and the first gentleman, former President, José Manuel Zelaya.

Subscribe now

Tunis: African CSOs and Decolonizing International Taxation

I had the immense pleasure to speak at a gathering of African civil society organizations from 26 different countries to discuss“The Role of African Countries in Defining Global Tax Rules,” co-hosted in Tunis by the Observatory of the Tunisian Economy (OTE) and Tax Justice Network Africa. The purpose of the workshop was to further empower, inform, and mobilize Africans to remain united behind the a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. My intervention was titled “A Geo-Strategic African Repositioning:International Taxation and Economic Architecture in a New Multipolar World,” and was made in my personal capacity rather than in my capacity as a member of the Expert Group of the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force. You can watch the recording (in Arabic) here. You can also read my initial blog from Accra when the historic vote took place last November “Decolonizing the International Tax System.” The consensus among African CSOs is that we need to remain united behind the UN Tax Convention process, to insist on rights-based and gender transformative tax system, and to ensure that the new global tax rules are consistent with the necessary transformation and policy action that we need for the new global rules on climate, trade, investment, and finance. To learn more about the UN Tax Convention process you can read this, this, this, and this, and read this excellent infographic produced by OTE.

Food Sovereignty in Tunisia

Did you know that "Food Security" is a dangerous neocolonial technical concept designed to force the Global South into debt traps, destroy our agriculture & ecology, and increase our dependence on the Global North? While in Tunis, I had the pleasure of speaking at an online event hosted by Green MENA Network under the theme of "Food Sovereignty: Who's Food Are We Producing in Tunisia?"(June 24, 2024). You can watch my intervention here. I highlighted the difference between the concepts of “food security” and “food sovereignty” and put both of them in the historical context of agricultural subsidies in the Global North, especially the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its impact on grains production in Tunisia, as well as CAP’s negative ecological impact in the Global South.

Subscribe now

Cuba: NIEO 50th Anniversary

This year, I celebrated International Workers’ Day in Havana, Cuba, where the New International Economic Order 50th Anniversary Congress was held. You can read the original NIEO document from United Nations here (May 1, 1974). The event was hosted by the Cuban government and facilitated by Progressive International, and included a large number of senior officials, diplomats, experts, and CSO leaders from around the world. I made two interventions at the Congress and expressed my solidarity with the people of Cuba for their resilience in surviving more than six decades of illegal blockade. The first intervention focused on highlighting the colonial and post-colonial economic traps that must be structurally removed to allow for the birth of a New International Economic Order. The second intervention (which I will post a longer blog about) was about the geopolitical opportunity that the Global South has to reposition itself away from the the colonial economic role that was imposed on it by the Global North. I will not say more here, but you can listen to a brief description of it in the second half of this episode of the EQUALS podcast. Finally, since we are talking about NIEO, I cannot recommend this 1975 report enough. What Now: Another Development, was published by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in 1975, and was presented in a special session of the United Nations. This is probably the most important economic development report that you’ve never heard of. Highly recommended. I will write more about it soon, but you can get a headstart by reading it yourself. Everything that needed to be done in the last 50 years is carefully articulated in this document.

EQUALS: Decolonizing to Decarbonize

I wanted to bring to your attention this EQUALS podcast I recorded with Oxfam’s Max Lawson and Nafkote Dabi: Decarbonizing to Decolonize. Take a listen.

A Pan-African Vision for a Just Transition

Finally, I had the opportunity to speak at second annual forum of the Transition Institute 1.5 “African Perspective on Climate Change,” which was convened by Mines Paris PSL on May 29, 2024. My speech was titled “A Pan-African Vision for Just Transition: We cannot decarbonize a system that hasn’t been decolonized yet.” You can watch the recording below, and you can watch the entire event here.

And to close, let me express my sincerest apologies for the long absence. It’s been a very hectic period. I will strive to post again soon.

Thank you, 谢谢, Asanteni Sana, شكرًا, Gracias!

Thank you for reading Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, a member of the Earth4All Economic Transformation Commission, a Steering Committee member with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, and serves as senior advisor with Power Shift Africa. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023, published by the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). He is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya and is working on climate finance and development policies in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter @FadhelKaboub and you can read his Global South Perspectives on substack where he blogs regularly.

Climate Finance for the Global North

Fadhel Kaboub — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 21:01:27 GMT

Happy Earth Week!

Greetings from the belly of the beast! I’ve been in Washington DC over the last few days attending the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund the World Bank Group. Six months after the IMF-WBG meetings in Marrakesh, we are still struggling to get the conversation focused on what it takes to truly transform the international financial architecture and to decolonize the global economic system. Let me share a few reflections here.

Subscribe now

To Engage or Not to Engage

That is the question that many of us have about the Spring meetings. It’s always a dilemma to decide if it’s actually worth our time and effort to engage with institutions that are nearly impossible to reform, by design. I am convinced that reforming the Bretton Woods institutions can only happen under the threat of an alternative financial architecture being built to replace them. That being said, I think it is still important to engage, increase the pressure, call them out publicly for not doing enough, and most importantly, doing the heavy lifting and building the alternative financial architecture that would actually force them to reform or perish.

Here is my statement to the media on the first day of the Spring Meetings:

“The real work to redesign the global financial institutions begins now as executives and political leaders return home from the Spring Meetings. Top on their agenda must be to address the debt crisis facing low-income African countries that risks sinking their economies. Under the current IMF and World Bank policies, developing countries have been forced to set aside most of their export revenues to service external debt with oppressive interest rates. This has effectively ridden critical sectors such as health, housing, education and climate action of funding. This is a great injustice that weakens the safety nets of some of the poorest people on the planet. To end this, widespread, radical and urgent reforms of the global financial architectures is non-negotiable. As effects of climate change grow in frequency and intensity, development challenges will only worsen the vulnerability and suffering of communities in poor nations, fueling a full-blown humanitarian crisis. Decisive leadership has never been more urgent.”

It was a mixed week in terms of engagement. We had a few off-the-record candid and very productive conversations with senior officials from the World Bank Group, but we also had several panels at the Civil Society Policy Forum with no representatives from the World Bank or the IMF engaging with civil society organizations. I spoke on two panels that had an empty chair behind the “Representative - World Bank Group” name-cards (pictured above). But the World Bank Group did send their reps to some panel to engage with civil society leaders. Some of that engagement was genuine and productive, whereas some was just down right insulting. My colleague Joab Okanda summarized it very nicely in this social media meme.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

An Open Letter on Africa’s external debt

I helped draft this open letter “Stop Africa's debt crisis from spiraling out of control: Time for the World Bank and IMF to act,” which was coordinated by Power Shift Africa and Earth4All. You can read the open letter and see the list of signatories here, but the core set of demands that we sent to the WB and IMF leaders is the following: We call on all bilateral, multilateral and private lenders to:

Immediately cancel public external debt payments for all African countries.
Transform biased credit rating practices of the big three credit rating agencies (S&P, Moody’s, Fitch).
Commit to urgent reform of the G20 Common Framework.
Urge private lenders to participate in debt reduction and rescheduling of loan repayments from low-income African countries to tackle the debt crisis.
Honour commitments to reallocate Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to vulnerable countries.
Restore broken climate finance promises to support African countries’ climate goals estimated at approximately $2.8 trillion.
Commit to a credible reform path for the global debt architecture.
Pay climate finance debts owed by G20 countries in the form of unconditional grants and technology transfer. Since low-income countries, especially in Africa, are owed at least $2.4 trillion in climate finance by 2030, they should withhold the equivalent of that debt until promises are fulfilled.
Channel climate and development finance to strategic investments in regenerative agriculture and agroecology to restore Africa’s food sovereignty, renewable energy deployment for Africa’s development rather than for export.
Stop promoting austerity conditions and promote bold, structural and transformative solutions at-scale, not small, superficial solutions.

Subscribe now

Lending to the Wrong Countries

My main message to the World Bank and the IMF is that they are getting climate finance completely backwards. They are lending money to the wrong countries and imposing austerity on the wrong countries.

They should be lending money to the historic polluters to help them pay for their climate debt in the form of debt cancellation, grants rather than loans to Global South countries to invest in food sovereignty and agroecology, renewable energy sovereignty, and high value-added manufacturing, along with transfer of lifesaving technologies to manufacture and deploy clean energy, clean cooking, and clean transportation infrastructure in the Global South.

Instead of imposing austerity on the Global South, the WB-IMF should be asking the historic polluters to tighten their belts, reduce their energy use, reduce waste, eliminate planned obsolescence , and fight consumerism under a coherent and comprehensive degrowth framework.

In other words, we should be thinking of the Global North as the countries that need climate finance, and the Global South as the countries that are owed a climate debt.

This is a new framing that I am trying to put on the table, but I’ve written several posts about this subject in recent months with similar framing with the hope to shift the narrative about climate finance from a Global South perspective (here, here here, and here).

You can watch these clips from my interventions last week at the Civil Society Policy Forum. I explained the colonial nature of the Bretton Woods institutions and the economic entrapment they have committed. I also explain the recent “greenwash, rinse, and repeat” model of green industrialization in Africa (specifically in Namibia). And finally, the last clip is from a panel on IDA replenishment (IDA21).

A few things to read

There were a number of very good publications that came out ahead of the Spring meetings. Let me quickly highlight a few of them here.

ActionAid published a series of one-pager briefings on climate justice and finance under #FixTheFinance.

ActionAid also release a new report called: Adapting Our Financial Architecture in a Crisis-Prone World: A Civil Society Proposal for Special Drawing Rights Reform.

Recourse published a new report calling out private sector-driven "Bigger, Bolder, Better" MDB reform agenda.

Recourse also published a new report analyzing initial experience with IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust shows evidence of concern: austerity, privatization, and fossil fuel expansion.

The Bretton Woods Project published their Spring 2024 quarterly Observer and a report called: Gambling with the planet’s future? World Bank Development Policy Finance, ‘green’ conditionality, and the push for a private-led energy transition.

Them Belly Full (but we hungry)

And finally an interesting anecdote from the WB and IMF headquarters is that their cafeterias serve subsidized meals! You can get a decent meal here for at least half the price you would pay at any nearby restaurant in Washington DC. The irony of pushing for removing food subsidies in the Global South but maintaining them at HQ made many of us roll our eyes here. It reminds me of Bob Marley’s wonderful song Them Belly Full (but we hungry). Take a listen!

New International Economic Order at 50

My next blog post will be from Havana, Cuba, where we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the New International Economic Order, and hopefully reviving that tradition and crafting a pathway for its implementation.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the International Tax Task Force, and serves as senior advisor with Power Shift Africa. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023, published by the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). He is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya and is working on climate finance and development policies in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter @FadhelKaboub and you can read his Global South Perspectives on substack where he blogs regularly.

The SDGs are not achievable

Fadhel Kaboub — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 06:46:12 GMT

Greetings from Addis Ababa!

I’m on my way back to Nairobi. I spent the last 3 days in Rome at a UN expert group meeting on SDG2 (Ending Hunger) at the FAO, in preparation for the 2024 High-Level Political Forum that will be held in July 2024. It was a bit ironic that the FAO building where we held the meeting used to be the Italian Ministry of the Colonies under the Mussolini regime, and my main message to the FAO was about decolonizing the global economic architecture is a prerequisite for achieving the SDGs, including SDG2 to end hunger. It is 2024, and the global food system reflects the legacy of colonial and post-colonial hierarchies. This blog is a brief summary of my main message to the FAO. I have also co-authored a recent piece about SDG5 (gender equality).

Subscribe now

A note to the FAO on SDGs:

None of the SDGs is achievable under the current global economic architecture that has been designed during colonial times, and further reinforced during post-colonial times via the rules of international finance, trade, investment, and taxation.

Economic decolonization means undoing the colonial economic roles that have been imposed on the Global South, which can be summarized as:

1. The Global South as the source of cheap raw materials for industrial development in the Global North,

2. The Global South as the large consumer market to absorb industrial output surplus from the Global North, and

3. The Global South as the place where obsolete technologies and assembly line manufacturing (which is no longer needed in the Global North) is outsourced for low-cost labor to assemble for Global North consumers.

In other words, the colonial role imposed on Africa is designed to lock the Global South at the bottom of the global value chain. Economic decolonization implies transformative investments to escape these traps. However, the global economic architecture is designed to make it nearly impossible to escape such traps because of the fiscal policy constraint imposed by the burden of external debt. External debt itself is a symptom of three deeper structural issues:

A. Food deficits,

B. Energy deficits, and

C. Value-added manufacturing deficits.

Therefore, the economic decolonization that will address the root causes of external debt and unlock the much needed fiscal policy space to achieve all the SDGs is centered around the following three strategic investments in:

1. Food sovereignty and agroecology (not just “food security”),

2. Renewable energy sovereignty, and

3. High value-added manufacturing that prioritize clean energy, clean cooking, and clean transportation infrastructure for deployment in the Global South.

All of these strategic investments are transformative economic policies that will simultaneously decolonize the economic structures of the Global South, address the root causes of external debt, decarbonize the system, and unlock a pathway for accelerating the achievement of all the SDGs.

A brief reflection

It was reassuring to get such a positive reaction from several colleagues in the expert group and from FAO staff, including from Stefanos Fotiou (Director of the Office of Sustainable Development Goals at the FAO, and Director of the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub) who live-tweeted my key message and requested a copy of Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023, published by the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition & Development). That being said, it was rather disappointing during the opening remarks of the most senior official of the FAO, the Director General, to completely ignore the unfolding genocide in Palestine and the use of hunger as a weapon of war at an expert group meeting that explicitly had specific sessions on conflict as a key obstacle for achieving SDG2. Sigh!

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the International Tax Task Force, and serves as senior advisor with Power Shift Africa. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023, published by the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). He is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya and is working on climate finance and development policies in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter @FadhelKaboub and you can read his Global South Perspectives on substack where he blogs regularly.

Climate Reparations, not "finance"

Fadhel Kaboub — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 17:45:51 GMT

Greetings from Bogota,

I spent the week in Bogota, Colombia for a series of presentations and meetings with Colombian government senior officials in the ministry of finance, the ministry of mines and energy, as well as senior diplomats. I also had a chance to meet with several academics, think tanks, and civil society organizations. It’s been a very productive and inspiring week. Today I wanted to comment briefly on the EU-Egypt “partnership” and on the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial meeting, which will set the stage for COP29, now dubbed the Climate Finance COP. Will it deliver? Or will it be the COP where climate finance goes to die?

Subscribe now

The EU strikes again!

My colleague Peo Hansen wrote this very important blog recently to remind us that the very foundation of the European Union was a colonial project. I have written about why Africa must reject the Mattei Plan for Africa, but these EU plans for Africa never stop. The latest one is the so-called strategic and comprehensive partnership between the EU and Egypt. Desperate for cash and under severe economic and social pressure domestically, the Egyptian government is once again walking into an EU-sponsored debt trap that is somehow labeled "strategic partnership".

It is certainly strategic for the EU to Arab-wash its complicity in the Gaza genocide by pushing through the export of stolen gas from occupied Palestine via Egyptian LNG plants, all for the sake of the EU's energy security. Allow me to quote my dear colleague Sultan Barakat’s recent op-ed on this subject:

This is a painful reminder of the failed EU energy security policies, which continue to be anti-climate, extractive, and colonial deals drenched in Palestinian, African, and Latin American blood.

Almost the entire $8 billion "aid" package is in the form of loans, European private sector investments; de-risked, of course, to ensure profitability to foreign investors, and greenwashed extractive investments. The grants portion of the deal is designed for Egypt to police EU-bound migration at the source.

This is a classic EU bilateral strategy of economic entrapment designed to keep African countries locked at the bottom of the global value chain, drained of their natural resources at the lowest possible cost, and policed by their own governments in a system of neocolonial abuse under the guise of "strategic partnership".

Subscribe now

COP29: Where Climate Finance Goes to Die?

I was asked to comment on this week’s annual Copenhagen Climate Ministerial meeting, which brings together 40 climate leaders and ministers to set the agenda for the next COP. Here is my take on it in a few sentences.

The state of climate finance today is disturbingly absurd. Global North countries owe a climate debt to the Global South, but instead of offering transformative climate finance in the form of debt relief, grants and transfer of life-saving technology for climate adaptation, they offer market-based greenwashed colonial entrapment in the form of loans, pollution permits (a.k.a. carbon credits), and de-risked extractive investments. If the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial meeting doesn't reset the climate finance rules of engagement this week, I am afraid we are going to COP29 with the expectation of more distractions, false solutions and tranquilizing drugs of gradualism and incrementalism. Will COP29 be the place where climate finance goes to die? or will it be the place where real climate action finally begins? We’ll see. You can read my take on how things went at COP28 here and here, and on the most dangerous climate finance “solutions” here.

Climate Reparations, not climate finance!

From a Global South perspective, climate finance ought to be a climate debt issue. The Global North has exceeded its carbon budget by appropriating and colonizing the atmospheric commons, which means the Global North owes a climate debt to the Global South. According to a recent study by Fanning and Hickel (2023), climate debt is estimated to be $193 trillion! Compare that to the $700 millions pledged to the Loss and Damage Fund!

So when someone owes a $100 debt, they are supposed to pay $100. However, in today’s climate finance framework, that person will give you $3 (disbursed in 12 installments) and will dictate what you can do with your $3 (requiring KPIs, transparency, accountability and quarterly reporting; otherwise disbursement is halted). Next, they will offer you a $7 loan at a concessional interest rate (noblesse oblige) but also with conditionalities dictating your spending and investment choices. Then, they will give you $5 but only if you give them your forest (carbon credits). Next, they will invest $10 in water-intensive green hydrogen projects for their own use. And finally they will also invest another $12 in obsolete assembly line manufacturing by low-cost labor to be exported to their consumer markets, but only if you de-risk it and blend-finance it to guarantee their profits.

All of this camouflaged extraction is happening when you are supposed to simply receive the $100 of climate debt owed to you without having to give anything in exchange. This is what climate finance looks like today. It’s greenwashed neocolonial extraction and abuse dressed up in market-based climate finance solutions.

Climate finance ought to be climate reparations in the form of debt cancellation, cash transfers, and transfer of life-saving technology for transformative investments in food sovereignty and agroecology, renewable energy, clean cooking, and clean transportation infrastructure manufactured and deployed in Africa. I tried to reset the climate finance conversation in this recent interview on TRT World about the so-called “blended finance”. I explain why the EU and Germany’s investments in Namibia’s green industrialization is in fact economic entrapment, green colonialism, decarbonization by dispossession for Namibia, in addition to it being an economic trade weapon for Germany against its global competitors, and an inflation management tool for the EU thanks to the CBAM tax. Take a listen.

I will write more about Namibia and green industrialization soon.

That’s it for today!

Gracias!

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, and serves as senior advisor with Power Shift Africa. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023, published by the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). He is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya and is working on climate finance and development policies in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter @FadhelKaboub and you can read his Global South Perspectives on substack where he blogs regularly.

Global South Repositioning

Fadhel Kaboub — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 10:05:15 GMT

Greetings from Tunis!

It’s been a busy month. I have a few longer blogs that I post soon (preview below) but I wanted to share some quick updates and some resources that I think will be helpful. I spent the last few days in Tunis. I’ll post the updates in reverse chronological order. Yesterday, I did an. interview (in Arabic) with Radio SonFM on a show cleverly called Sans Emissions (Without Emissions, but also a play on words to say Sound Show). The full show is available here. We discussed green colonialism in the Global South, the Mattei Plan, the Non-Aligned Movement and G77+China South Summit in Kampala, fossil fuel economic entrapment, the so-called green industrialization of Namibia (new blog on this coming up soon), and most importantly, I discussed what I call the Bargain of the Century for the Global South, which I will write about soon.

Subscribe now

Strategic Repositioning the Global South

I gave two keynote speeches in Tunis this week. On Monday, I presented “Diplomacy for Economic & Geopolitical Transformation: A Strategic Repositioning of the Global South” at a closed-door event hosted by H.E. Ambassador Faisal Gouia at the newly established International Diplomatic Academy. The audience was none other than the 50 top recruits of the Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs who came out of a very competitive selection and examination process that included close to 12,000 candidates.

I explained why the Global South must decolonize the global economic architecture and I presented the main arguments from the Just Transition report (available in English & French) that we publish last May (published by The Independent Group of Experts on Just Transition & Development), and most importantly I discussed the role of Global South diplomacy in crafting a major geopolitical bargaining chip in this particular moment of geopolitical repositioning. I will write about this in more detail soon, but if you can’t wait, you can listen to the main argument in this recent Macro N Cheese podcast I recorded with a few weeks ago.

And last but not least, I presented “The Colonial Roots of Climate Injustice in Africa: A United Front for Strategic Repositioning of the Global South,” at CEMAT, which was followed by a lively discussion moderated by my colleague Max Ajl. However, the main reason for the entire visit to Tunis this week was to record an interview for Habib Ayeb’s upcoming documentary about climate change titled Waiting for the Rain, which we did on Saturday afternoon at the CMAT library. I can’t wait to see the full documentary, but I must also urge all of you to watch his brilliant documentary on food sovereignty: Seeds of Dignity (subtitled in English).

I’m off to Cairo, then Nairobi. I’ll write again soon!

Stay radical, my friends!

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, and serves as senior advisor with Power Shift Africa. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023, published by the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition & Development). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). He is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya and is working on climate finance and development policies in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter @FadhelKaboub and you can read his Global South Perspectives on substack where he blogs regularly.

The Mirage of Gender Equality in the MENA Region

Fadhel Kaboub — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 15:33:35 GMT

Greetings from Beirut, Lebanon!

I spent the last few days at the 2024 Arab Forum on Sustainable Development (AFSD) held at the UN-ESCWA headquarters in Beirut. My main message was simple. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cannot be achieved under the current neocolonial global economic architecture (Full Panel Video). Needless to say, that SDGs cannot be achieved in a country like Palestine with people living under brutal occupation and facing a genocide. And as we celebrate International Women’s Day, let’s remember the fact that with the ongoing genocide in Gaza, more than 25,000 Palestinian women and girls have been murdered by the IDF in the last five months. Today’s blog explains my main message at the 2024 AFSD with a particular focus on SDG5, and is co-authored with Majda El Ajmi and is cross-posted both in English and Arabic via MENA Fem Movement for Economic Development and Ecological Justice. My next post will be from Tunis in a few days. I will give a talk on March 9 at 10am at CEMAT entitled "The Colonial Roots of Climate Injustice in Africa: A United Front for Strategic Repositioning of the Global South.” I will also give a talk entitled “Diplomacy for Economic & Geopolitical Transformation: A Strategic Repositioning of the Global South” at the International Diplomatic Academy on March 11 (closed event). Enjoy the blog below, and I will write again soon.

Subscribe now

As we celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8, 2024, let us reflect on the progress, or the lack thereof, towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set forth by the United Nations in 2015 under the UN Agenda 2030. Among these goals, SDG5 stands out as it aims to achieve gender equality and to empower all women and girls. Unfortunately, progress towards the SDGs in general has been disappointing, and in the MENA region in particular. At the current pace, it is evident that the SDGs, including SDG5, will take several decades to achieve, despite being less than six years away from the SDGs target date of 2030.

There is a simple reason for the world's failure to achieve the SDGs. We are trying to deliver economic and social transformation in a global system that still operates under a colonial global economic architecture that was built on hierarchical, extractivist, abusive, and unequal modes of operation, deliberately designed to benefit the Global North at the expense of the Global South.

In essence, the realization of all SDGs, especially SDG5 hinges upon the urgent need to decolonize the global economic architecture, which includes transforming the financial architecture, the rules of international trade and investment, and the international tax system. Without addressing these fundamental issues, achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls will remain nothing but a fleeting illusion.

The MENA region, with its rich cultural heritage and diverse societies, exemplifies the complexities of navigating towards gender equality within a colonial economic structure. Despite efforts to promote women’s rights and participation in various aspects of society, significant challenges persist. These challenges are deeply rooted in structural inequalities perpetuated by historical legacies and patriarchal systems.

Figure 1: MENA region progress on SDGs

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

While some progress has been made in certain areas, such as education and workforce participation, the reality is that women in the MENA region continue to face numerous barriers to equality. These barriers manifest in various forms, including limited access to economic opportunities, legal discrimination, cultural norms, and persistent gender-based violence. 61.5% of women in Yemen suffer from anemia, while one in three Arab women have anemia because of malnutrition.

According to the International Labour Organisation, female unemployment in the Arab region is three times higher than the world average, standing at 15.6%. Arab female labor force participation is the lowest in the world at 18.4% compared to the world average of 48%. Furthermore, only 11% of managerial positions are held by women in the Arab region compared to the world average of 27.1%. Additionally, Arab women spend almost five times more hours on unpaid care work than men in the region.

Moreover, the ongoing conflicts and instability in several countries across the region exacerbate the plight of women, leaving them disproportionately affected by displacement, poverty and lack of access to essential services. In conflict affected areas, women often bear the brunt of the crisis, yet their voices and needs are frequently sidelined in decision-making processes. This conflict backdrop hampers the crucial regional cooperation needed for SDG implementation. Even if conflicts were to cease immediately, traditional methods would not suffice to achieve the SDGs by 2030, which is why we need a complete development paradigm shift.

Subscribe now

In order to truly advance gender equality in the MENA region, there must be a concerted effort to dismantle the structural barriers that impede women’s empowerment. This required not only legislative reforms and policy interventions but also a fundamental shift in the economic paradigm towards one that is inclusive, equitable, just and decolonized.

Furthermore, empowering women is not only a moral imperative but also a strategic one. Women make a significant contribution to economic growth, social cohesion, and environmental sustainability. Investing in women’s education, healthcare, and economic opportunities is essential for achieving the SDGs and building more resilient and inclusive societies in the MENA region, which can unlock its full potential for a more just and prosperous future for all.

However, when countries are burdened by massive external debts that minimize the fiscal policy space available for the much needed strategic investments to advance development priorities, it becomes impossible to achieve any of the SDGs. In other words, addressing the external debt crisis becomes a prerequisite for achieving the SDGs. However, external debt is a symptom of three structural colonial traps: food deficits, energy deficits, and manufacturing deficits.

According to ESCWA, Arab countries import 50% of the calories they consume. The region imports 63% of the wheat consumed, and the GCC countries import more than 90% of their needs. Annual food imports in the Arab region amount to $110 billion.

With the exception of the oil-rich countries in the Arab region, most countries are heavily dependent on energy imports despite having a huge renewable energy potential. According to ESCWA, countries like Morocco, Jordan and Lebanon import more than 90% of their energy needs, with energy subsidies reaching $10 billion annually in Egypt and Algeria, and a whopping $30 billion in Saudi Arabia.

And when it comes to industrial activity, the Arab region is locked at the bottom of the global value chain with a manufacturing base that imports technology, intermediate components, fuel to power its factories, and even the packaging. The result is low value-added exports relative to the high value-added content of the region's imports.

These three structural deficits weaken arab currencies relative to the US dollar, which renders the region’s imports of critical supplies more expensive, thus forcing Arab governments to subsidize food and fuel imports and to borrow more dollars to stabilize their currencies. And it is this excessive borrowing that eliminates the much needed fiscal capacity to invest in strategic priorities that allow the region to achieve SDG5 and the rest of the SDGs.

To achieve the SDGs the MENA region must decolonize its economic structures by prioritizing regional cooperation for strategic investments in food sovereignty and agroecology, investment in renewable energy sovereignty, and regional industrial policies that leverage the complementarity of MENA’s resources and capabilities to focus on high value-added industrialization. The MENA region must also enhance its strategic cooperation with other Global South countries that can complement and accelerate the deployment of these transformative policies. Only then will we have the chance to deliver the needed results on all the SDGs, including SDG5.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Decolonizing African Football (& Economies)

Fadhel Kaboub — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 09:55:36 GMT

Salamno from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia!

African football fans enjoyed some amazing football matches over the last few weeks. We celebrated our football superstars and our favorite teams during the 2023 African Cup of Nations (AFCON). However, a tournament that was moved to 2024 because of the climate-induced unfavorable and sometimes disastrous weather conditions that affect West Africa during the tropical rain season. And to add insult to injury, our AFCON has been hijacked by TotalEnergies as a platform to sportswash and greenwash its extraction, pollution, and abuse of the African continent. Decolonizing African football is just as important as decolonizing our economy, education, and just about every aspect of our lives. Ultimately, of course, we are talking about Decolonizing the Mind.

Subscribe now

African CSOs call out TotalEnergies

Thanks to the excellent work of African Civil Society Organizations, the hijacking of AFCON by TotalEnergies to greenwash its abuse of the African continent did not go unchecked. Please read the full press release that I included below, but let me highlight a couple of statements from a couple of African Civil Society leaders.

The sponsorship of the Africa Cup of Nations by TotalEnergies is a textbook case of taking away someone’s land and, in return, giving them food rations every harvest season. This is thuggery of the most abhorrent order and for CAF to take money from the French multinational is to validate thievery of the continent’s resources by Western companies. Wherever it has been on the continent, Total has left a horrid imprint of population displacements, human rights violations, and climate change. If anyone has ever needed a reminder of the damage to climate by the oil and gas industry, they need to look no further than Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria, the AFCON finalists and poster child of climate change in Africa. To invite Total to our football extravaganza is, therefore, to invite a stranger to our party to mock us. ~ Mohamed Adow, Founder and Director of Power Shift Africa.

Fossil fuels - the lifeblood of climate-wrecking companies like TotalEnergies - are poisoning the lungs of African athletes and soccer fans. But Total continues to displace communities for new oil drilling and spew toxins before shipping massive profits back to Europe. And yet they have been allowed to be title sponsors of AFCON. This is unacceptable. Total is turning AFCON from a celebration of African unity into a grotesque greenwashing stunt. It's time to kick TotalEnergies out of our stadiums. Our passion for football runs deep, but so does our love for a clean, healthy Africa. ~ Cynthia Moyo, Greenpeace Africa's Climate and Energy Campaigner.

Subscribe now

Total Economic Entrapment Exposed

It is not by accident that Africa's top oil exporters import most of their fuel from international suppliers in the global north, it is by design. Oil companies in the global north control the technologies for prospecting, drilling, and refining fossil fuels. They use a classic play book of economic entrapment to make oil rich countries energy poor, technologically dependent, and at their mercy to power our economies.

Step 1: Country X gives prospection permits to an oil giant like TotalEnergies because they are told they have the right to use their sovereignty to exploit their natural resources; they are told African countries have “the right to development.”

Step 2: TotalEnergies finds massive oil reserves, and offers to drill and extract said oil reserves to export to international markets. Country X often gets only a small ownership share (maybe 15-30%) in its own oil projects. And because country X has no way of fully controlling how much TotalEnergies is actually exporting, pure theft of crude oil is often not a far fetched possibility.

Step 3: Country X asks TotalEnergies to help it build a refinery to cover all of its domestic needs and to give the country full energy independence. TotalEnergies will say, no way, your economy is too small, refineries are too expensive to build, you’re better off importing refined oil products from international markets…. Maybe in a few years we’ll consider it, but only if you can pay $3.5 billion. Oh, and by the way, we still need you to contribute to the oil extraction upfront cost. Build an airport in the middle of nowhere so we can bring our equipment (in other words, start borrowing a few hundred million dollars now). Figure out a way to clear the path for a pipeline. Help us keep displaced communities and environmental activists out of the way.

Step 4: Country X has no plan B. Its people already know there is a lot of oil money coming, so their expectations are already high, and a long list of development projects and demand for public services is putting pressure on the government to deliver results.

Step 5: The government already walked into a debt trap to cover upfront costs. Oil revenues start to flow, the government gets into debt-financed investments in infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, sanitation, housing… all of which often serving upper class interests and prioritizes more extractive economic activities.

Step 6: Because of the boost in economic activity, Country X starts importing even more fuel to power its grid, the new cars and trucks that people have imported, and to satisfy the higher level of energy demand.

Step 7: Consumers in Country X demand even higher standard of living and start importing even more clothing and gadgets from international brands. The country’s trade deficit is even wider than before the oil discovery.

Step 8: Country X wants to industrialize, but the only “industrialization” it is allowed to have is bottom of the global value chain manufacturing: import machines, import intermediate components to assemble with low cost labor, import the fuel to power the factories, and even import the packaging.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Oil Giants have Strategic Plans for Africa

Africa's "friends" (see list above) are meeting in London May 14-16, 2024 to plan the best ways to exploit the continent and to keep it energy poor and indebted, essentially using the the same Total Economic Entrapment playbook outlined above. And of course, if African political leadership doesn’t put forward and activate a strategic and comprehensive energy policy that interlocks with the Africa Mining Vision and a Pan-African industrial policy, we will continue to be part of somebody else’s strategic vision.

Take a look at the current and planned fossil fuel production plans in Africa. The map below, which we feature in the Just Transition report (available in English & French) that we publish last May (published by The Independent Group of Experts on Just Transition & Development), looks more like an military invasion plan, or an old map from colonial extraction plans. The reality is that this is not an energy security plan.

Africa’s Actual Right to Development

Imagine if 100 years ago when the world was transitioning to the automobile as the main mode of transportation, someone decided we are a sovereign nation, we have the right to development, and we’re going to use our resources to double down on investing in the horse and cart industry, and we’ll let the rest of the world invest in new technologies that will dominate the next century. That is exactly what the fossil fuel industry means with the “right to development” narrative.

It is precisely because Africa has the right to an alternative development path that we should not accept getting locked into the obsolete, expensive, dangerous, unhealthy, inefficient, exclusive, and abusive energy system of the past. Instead, Africa’s biggest opportunity is to leapfrog into a the energy system of the future by taping into its enormous renewable energy potential. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), “Africa’s estimated potential to generate renewable energy from existing technologies is 1,000 times larger than its projected demand for electricity in 2040.”

Finally, Africa cannot walk into a new debt trap as it leapfrogs into a renewable energy future. Africa cannot be the exporter of cheap critical minerals, the importer of renewable energy technology, and the continent locked at the bottom of the global value chain. Africa’s renewable energy potential, is a platform for industrializing the continent and truly decolonizing its economic system. Africa has all the natural resources (strategic minerals) needed for a high-tech revolution, it has the economies of scale needed for industrialization, and has the market demand to support manufacturing of clean energy, clean cooking, and clean transportation infrastructure that will create millions of jobs, and truly provide the transformative development pathway that has been systematically denied to us.

While Africa does have the complementarity of recourse and capabilities at scale, it does still lack access to the technological manufacturing capabilities for this type of Pan-African industrial policy. Which global economic powerhouse will be willing to transfer technology for this life-saving transformative climate and development strategy? Is it going to be the US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, or China? I will come back to the geopolitical dimension of this question in a separate piece soon. Are we able to address one of the major blindspots about industrialization, which is the international trade and investment architecture that is dominated by the WTO (especially the TRIPS rules)? And why are we speaking of Pan-African industrial policies? why not focus on national industrial policies? Again, I will write about this soon, but I wanted you to think about these key questions, the answers to which will make or break our efforts to decolonize Africa.

Decolonizing African football and taking back AFCON from TotalEnergies is part and parcel of an all-encompassing vision to restore African economic and monetary sovereignty. We must double our efforts to do the radical work needed to activate Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want, starting right here this week in Addis Ababa as we gather here to witness the 2024 African Union Summit (which I write about in a few days).

Ameseginalehu 🙏🏽

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, and serves as senior advisor with Power Shift Africa. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023, published by the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition & Development). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). He is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya and is working on climate finance and development policies in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter @FadhelKaboub and you can read his Global South Perspectives on substack where he blogs regularly.

Why Africa must reject the Mattei Plan

Fadhel Kaboub — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 02:16:45 GMT

Greetings from Nairobi,

I am troubled by the number of African presidents, prime ministers, and senior officials who skipped the G77+China South Summit in Kampala last week, but flocked to Rome this week when they were summoned by the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni to attend the Italy-Africa Summit to be presented with the Mattei Plan for Africa. Since African leaders don’t have a plan for Africa, we will continue to be part of someone else’s plans, be it Europe, the US, China, or the G7 (which Italy is presiding this year). It is 2024, so colonial plans come dressed up in PR-proof rhetoric with partnership slogans like “not predatory, not paternalistic, but not charitable either.” That is how Meloni described Italy’s “vision of development in Africa.”

Subscribe now

Climate Refugees are on the Move

Italy has a problem. It is the gateway to Europe for thousands of migrants who cross the Mediterranean every year. Hundreds of them perish before they make it to European shores. According to UNHCR, “between January and July 2023, some 120,200 refugees and migrants arrived in Europe, specifically through the Mediterranean and Northwest African maritime routes. This resulted in a 77 per cent increase compared to the same period last year. In July, overall arrivals increased by […] 70 per cent compared to the same period last year.” According to the Missing Migrants Project database, the number of migrant deaths and disappearances in the Mediterranean increased from 2,048 in 2021 to 2,411 in 2022 and to 3,041 by the end of 2023 (UN News). Note that the UN is very deliberate about not using the label “Climate Refugees” because it carries with it very important legal protections and financial implications that the system is not ready to handle yet.

A recent report “Groundswell” by the World Bank, which is not the most radical climate organization, estimates that by 2050 (aka the day after tomorrow on the climate calendar), about 216 million people will be internally displaced by climate events globally, about half will be displaced in Africa, and even if a small fraction of those individuals decide to cross the Mediterranean, we will have a refugee crisis on a scale never seen before. Needless to say, that when people are displaced internally, this tends to put immense pressure on local resources in terms of food, housing, healthcare, education, and jobs, all of which exacerbates social tensions and often sparks conflicts. In short, Italy’s (and the EU’s) problems are about to get a lot bigger than what they are today. I discussed this on a BBC radio interview this week (click on the audio file below and give it a listen).

Some of the most important push factors for this phenomenon is climate change, but when it’s coupled with restricted fiscal policy space due to Africa’s massive external debt, which international financial institutions tell us requires austerity measures, then we have added fuel to the fire of migration. The EU policy has been focused on policing the boarder and intensifying the security apparatus with cooperation from North African governments. The migration phobia is based on concerns that immigrants and refugees are an economic burden, that they will take jobs away from European workers, and there is of course the racist argument about changing the ethnic, religious, and cultural composition of Western Europe. My colleague Peo Hansen wrote an excellent book debunking the myth about the negative economic pressures that Europe faces due to migration. The book is called Modern Migration Theory: An Alternative Economic Approach to Failed EU Policy (Columbia University Press, 2021), and I had the pleasure of writing a review essay called “Preparing for a Climate Refugee Tsunami: The Case for Climate Reparations,” You can read the entire symposium published by Discover Society here.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

The Mattei Plan for Africa

Named after Enrico Mattei, the founder of Italy’s national oil company ENI, the Mattei Plan by its very name doesn’t sit well with anyone in Africa. Mattei was known in Italy for using bribery to get things done, and ENI is not exactly the most climate friendly corporation that we want at the center of this partnership initiative. Needless to say that having the current CEO of ENI (along with other Italian CEOs) sitting in the same room with African leaders summoned to Rome to be told about Italy’s vision for Africa is just not what we want to see in 2024. To his credit, African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat made it very clear that African leaders went to Rome without knowing what the Mattei plan actually is. He said “we would have liked to have been consulted.” He later added “we need to pass from words to deeds [….]. You can understand that we cannot be happy with promises that often are not maintained.” You can read his full speech here.

I have also unpacked a bit of the Mattei plan on CGTN Africa this week. Click on the video below and give it a listen. I briefly explained that the Mattei plan was recently tested with Tunisia and now it’s being scaled up to the entire continent.

While we do not know the full details of the Mattei plan for Africa yet, we have bits and pieces of what was revealed over the last few days. The infographic below gives a brief overview of some of the main points. Special thanks to my friends at Don’t Gas Africa for doing the investigative work and for producing this infographic. Apparently the Mattei plan is a 4-year plan that would be renewed or scaled up in the future depending on how things go. The total funds amount to about 5 billion euros. I am guessing the majority of which will be loans and loan guarantees, with a bit of grants here and there (let’s remember to put this in the context of overall climate finance needs).

The bulk of the investments will be in the energy sector. Meloni made it very clear that Italy wants to become the energy hub for the EU. Plans are already underway to build the ELMED Interconnector Project, which will be the first direct current connection between Europe and Africa (more details are available here on the ELMED Project website). Italy’s Climate Fund has pledged 3 billion euros, while the African Development Bank has pledged 2.5 billion euros. It’s noteworthy that Saudi Arabia has pledged 200 million euros and the UAE 100 million euros. It appears that OPEC countries have been identifying ways to solidify demand for their fossil fuel products in Africa now that global demand is set to decline.

Subscribe now

African CSOs Dissect the Mattei Plan

Led by Don’t Gas Africa, more than 80 African civil society organizations issued a joint letter addressed to the Italian government ahead of the Italy-Africa Summit. African civil society and independent expert voices have made it very clear that we cannot accept partnership offers that deepen Africa's structural problems, increase our dependence on extractive industries, and lock us further into the obsolete, expensive, unhealthy, and unjust fossil fuel energy system of the past.

We want to build renewable energy infrastructure to serve the 600 million Africans who have no access to electricity rather than export it for Europe’s energy security. We want to invest in food sovereignty and agroecology, not cash crop exports to complement the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). We need to escape the bottom of the global value chain and invest in high value-added manufacturing that prioritizes clean energy, clean cooking, and clean transportation manufacturing for deployment in Africa. If the Italy-Africa partnership does not respect Africa's needs, then I am afraid the so-called "Mattei Plan" is nothing but a blatant colonial project that must be exposed and rejected rather than celebrated by African leaders.

Join us in this X-Spaces discussion hosted by @DontGasAfrica on Friday February 2nd at 6:30pm East Africa Time. We will unpack the outcome of the Italy-Africa Summit and hear directly from African civil society leaders and experts as they critically assess the Mattei plan and expose dangerous traps that African must avoid. You can listen to the live discussion here.

Africa’s Plan for Africa: Agenda 2063

The African Union has an important strategic plan for Africa, and it’s called Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. Does the Mattei Plan acknowledge Africa’s Agenda 2063? Does Italy want to contribute to implementing Africa’s priorities? Does anybody in the Global North want Agenda 2063 to see the light of day and turn Africa into a global economic powerhouse? The answer to all of these questions is clearly niente, non, nein, no! Why? Because they want Africa to continue playing the same colonial role that was imposed on us as the place for cheap raw materials, the large consumer market for European industrial output, and the damping ground for obsolete technologies and assembly line manufacturing that is no longer needed in Europe.

Most African leaders want to activate Agenda 2063, but their fiscal capacity has been decimated by the burden of external debt, which is used as a pressure point to delay and prevent the structural decolonization of our economies. As we discussed in our recent report Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023, published by the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition & Development), Africa's external debt stems from three key areas of economic deficiencies: food, energy and manufacturing deficits. The IMF and the World bank have systematically contributed to deepening these structural traps by financing and mandating policies that (1) prioritize investments in cash crops for export rather than core crop production to restore our food sovereignty; (2) neglect the deployment of renewables that reduce our dependence on fossil fuel imports; and (3) deepen our position at the bottom of the global value-chain by forcing us to specialize in low value-added manufacturing. This is what called intentional entrapment (Also available in Arabic, courtesy of Inhiyez).

I hope when African leaders gather in Addis Ababa in two weeks at the African Union Summit that they will have a serious conversation about activating and operationalizing Agenda 2063 in a concrete way that allows us to establish strategic partnerships on terms that are favorable to Africa’s interests. And I long for the day when Global North leaders are summoned to the African Union headquarters to listen to African leaders as they reveal their vision to reposition Africa in the global economy as an economic powerhouse to be reckoned with. This repositioning of Africa is the prerequisite for rebalancing the world economically, ecologically, and geopolitically. And in the iconic words of Emperor Haile Selassie, “the dream of lasting peace… will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained” (1963 UN General Assembly speech by Haile Selassie, made famous by Bob Marley in his classic song War). Yes, you’ve guessed it, I am a huge Bob Marley fan, but who isn’t really?

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

The G77+China Third South Summit

Fadhel Kaboub — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 06:58:53 GMT

Good morning from Kampala!

This week Uganda is not only the Pearl of Africa, but also the symbolic capital of the Global South. Uganda is hosting the 19th Non-Aligned Movement Summit (Jan 15-20) and the G77+China Third South Summit (Jan 21-23) at Speke Resort & Convention Center Munyonyo. I have written about Uganda’s leadership role in the Global South during after my last visit to Kampala back in November in preparation for the South Summit. Coincidentally (or not), while Global South countries gathered to discuss South-South cooperation and how to face the challenges of debt, development and climate change, others turned their attention to Davos, Switzerland where global business elites summoned government officials and leaders of global financial institutions to influence global economic thinking in a way that serves and protects their interest, while pretending to care about inequality, poverty, and climate change.

Subscribe now

I had the pleasure of reuniting with my dear colleagues Julius Mucunguzi from Uganda (left) and Andrés Chiriboga from Ecuador (right) to continue our research and policy collaboration on debt, development and South-South strategic cooperation, which I have written about last November when we all gathered on the other side of the planet in Quito, Ecuador.

Targeted, transformative, radical, and at-scale

These are the keywords that I used to open my remarks on development and climate finance at a High-Level Seminar co-hosted by UNCTAD and the governments of Uganda and China under the theme of “Enhancing Economic Resilience through broader South-South Economic Cooperation.” The event was moderated by Richard Kozul-Wright (Director, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, UNCTAD) and began with opening speeches by H.E. Rebeca Grynspan (Secretary-General, UNCTAD), H.E. Miao Deyu (Assistant Foreign Minister, China), and H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Musenveni (President, Uganda).

I spoke at a roundtable on reforming international financial architecture to scale up development and climate finance for the Global South, which included H.E. Mr. Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta (Permanent Representative at the UN, Cuba), Ms. Hanan Morsy (Deputy Executive Secretary, UNECA), Mr. Francis Ogwang (Country Manager, East African Development Bank, Uganda), and Ms. Yuefen Li (Senior Advisor on South-South Cooperation and Development Finance, South Centre).

Development and climate finance must be targeted towards strategic sectors such as agriculture, energy, and high value-added manufacturing that prioritizes clean energy, clean cooking, and clean transportation infrastructure for use in the Global South rather than for export; transformational, so that the focus is on food sovereignty and agroecology (core crops, rather than cash crops), renewables rather than fossil fuels (aka stranded assets), radical in the literal sense of the term, going to the roots of the problems rather than the usual bandaid solutions, false solutions, and dangerous distractions, focusing on adaptation rather than just mitigation; and at-scale rather than the usual and painfully slow, gradual, and incremental approach of the past.

I highlighted that the G77+China as a block effectively controls almost the entire global supply of strategic minerals that form the basis for the clean-tech and high-tech 21st century industries. Countries such as China and India have the manufacturing base for the entire value-chain that can be replicated and scaled up via South-South strategic cooperation, transfer of technology, joint-ventures, regional industrial policies to manufacture and deploy the building blocks of development and prosperity that would allow the Global South to leapfrog and reposition itself more favorably in the global economy and escape the colonial traps of extractivism and bottom of the global value-chain.

Finally, I closed my intervention by emphasizing that the Global South must decolonize the global economic architecture rather than just “reform” the financial architecture. The global economic architecture includes finance, trade, investment and taxation architectures, all of which was not designed by us, not designed for us, so it cannot be the same architecture that will deliver development, prosperity and justice for the Global South. More importantly, nobody at Davos is going to redesign or build this new architecture for us. It is incumbent upon us to build the alternative architecture that will actually work for us.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the creation of both UNCTAD and the G77+China. It was also a wonderful opportunity to catch up with my colleague and mentor H.E. Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of UNCTAD, and to share perspectives about important challenges and opportunities facing the Global South.

Subscribe now

The UNCTAD high-level seminar concluded with an excellent roundtable discussion on promoting South-South trade, investment, and industrial cooperation through regional initiatives, with H.E. Mwebesa Francis (Minister of Trade Industry and Cooperatives, Uganda), H.E. Kerrie D. Symmonds (M.P.Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and Senior Minister coordinating the Productive Sector, Barbados), H.E. Rob Davis (Former Minister of Trade and Industry, South Africa), and Ms. Dima Al-Khatib, Director, UN Office for South-South Cooperation).

Overall, the gathering offered several opportunities to discuss the strategic policy options that came out of the Just Transition report (published by the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition & Development, 2023) with several ministers, ambassadors, heads of delegations from several countries including Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Iran, Rwanda, Venezuela, Bolivia, Lesotho, Cuba, and Tanzania to mention a few.

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, and serves as senior advisor with Power Shift Africa. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023, published by the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition & Development). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). He is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya and is working on climate finance and development policies in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter @FadhelKaboub and you can read his Global South Perspectives on substack where he blogs regularly.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub