by The Fikiria Desk | Feb 26, 2022 | Economics
An economy where most people farm should not be one where most farmers stay poor, yet that has long described Uganda. Productive land coexists with subsistence incomes because output rarely converts into money at the household level. The Parish Development Model,...
by The Fikiria Desk | Sep 4, 2020 | Economics
Financial deepening is usually told as a banking story, measured in branches, deposits and loan books. In Uganda the deepening happened somewhere else — on phones, through agents, largely outside the statute book. A large share of adults transacted digitally long...
by The Fikiria Desk | Mar 29, 2020 | Economics
Djibouti earns its living from movement, but movement is a thin foundation. A country that lives on transit fees is exposed to every shift in a neighbour’s trade and every fluctuation in global shipping. This week’s establishment of a sovereign wealth fund...
by The Fikiria Desk | Mar 25, 2020 | Economics
An economy can grow for years and still not compound. Somalia’s ports, telecoms and traders expanded through three decades of arrears, but without formal international finance the gains never converted into the productive capacity that lifts a whole market. On...
by The Fikiria Desk | Jan 1, 2020 | Economics
A financial centre is often described in the language of finance, funds, fees, domiciles. The more revealing lens is economic. As 2020 opens with the Kigali International Financial Centre now operating, the question worth asking is not how much capital it holds, but...