“What strikes me is that so little has been made of the contrast with the Haitian earthquake. This was 700 times less powerful than the main Japanese quake, yet the death toll in Haiti was an order of magnitude higher (300,000 compared to around 20,000 in Japan). There has also been a huge contrast in post-quake reconstruction - over a year on from Haiti’s quake, most of Port-au-Prince is still rubble, whereas the Japanese have already done the clean up and passed a $48 billion recovery budget, with every expectation that they will be able to rebuild affected towns and cities.” —
What the media misses: Matthew Lockwood, Head of Climate Change at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS).
“How could this economic dwarf be a member… South Africa’s gross domestic product only amounts to one-sixteenth of China’s output, it only has 50 million inhabitants and annual growth barely exceeds 3.5%, far behind China (10.3% last year). Thanks to their booming economies, the four other Brics members will contribute 60% of global growth in 2014, according to the IMF.” —
BRIC turns into BRICS - because South Africa is the gateway to Africa? Sébastien Hervieu reports.
“Grameen, BRAC, ASA and Proshika all strong-armed women into paying back. In extreme cases homesteads are taken apart and the timber and tin sold off” —
Microfinance institutions pushed loans: Lamia Karim, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Oregon
The Coke Side of Life
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
by irene2005