Happiness Economics, Tax Reform and Innovation in Africa

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s review of Africa-themed progress reports and article. The Global Burden of Disease, the pertinence of measuring happiness and the post 2015 development agenda and tackling tax evasion in Africa are among the highlights:

• Can “happiness economics” provide a new framework for development? An article by Christian Kroll for the Guardian assesses whether or not life satisfaction and happiness surveys can help in establishing post 2015 development goals. There’s considerable heterogeneity in the factors that make people happy, the author concludes from a research project  where he surveyed 100,000 people from 70 nations that examined data on life satisfaction for 100,000 people from 70 nations. This will require customizing any development goals based on “happiness economics” and need the participation of people in any development framework based on it.

• G20: how global tax reform could transform Africa's fortunes. In this article, the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urges G20 leaders to enforce transparent beneficial ownership and to tackle tax avoidance, transfer mispricing of multinational companies working in African countries. Increased connectivity and education has made Africans lose their tolerance for exploitation and expect a fair share of the wealth beneath their soil and territorial waters.The video below, by the Africa Progress Panel shows how tax fraud prevents Africa from enjoying its faire share of its own natural resources. 

• The Global Burden of Disease: Generating Evidence, Guiding Policy summarizes the main findings and explores the leading causes of diseases, injuries, and risk factors in many of the world's countries.Published by the World Bank and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), the report is based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010), a collaborative effort of researchers from 50 countries around the world led by IHME at the University of Washington. Sub-Saharan Africa and the MENA countries are two of the regions highlighted in this project.

• Africa can invent: Leapfrogging in unsuspected areas, in this blog post, UNECA’s Executive Director, highlights the innovations in science and technology occurring right now in Africa, from the M-PESA mobile payment system in Kenya to the Square Kilometer Array that is being developed right now in South Africa. Strong economic growth, stability and transparency have been strong incentives for investors to come and capitalize on this innovation boom in Africa but for it to benefit people of the continent, human resource training, linkages between business and educations,  adequate financing and access to reliable infrastructure such as communications, energy and transport are some of the measures that need to be prioritized.

• Wikigender’s online discussion on “How do discriminatory social norms relate to the gender dynamics of international migration?” has started this Monday, September 2^nd. We invite you to leave your comment (in any language)  and join the dialogue in the section “Contribute!” of the discussion page. Here is the link: http://bit.ly/16TdlNJ and the hashtag used in Twitter is #migration. 

We hope you enjoyed this review. Stay tuned the same time next week for another roundup of the week that was.

Yours in progress,

Ousmane Aly DIALLO