Media

IPN Opinion article

March 27, 2003
Some believe that the war in Iraq is about oil. They are wrong, but the next war may very well be one over a far more precious liquid -- water. According to the U.N.\'s World Water Development Report, which was presented at the Third World Water Forum that just concluded in Japan, water may be a major source of conflict in the Middle East in the years to come. Elsewhere, including Asia, it threatens to be an increasingly contentious issue.

IPN Opinion article

March 1, 2003
While the Financial Times is correct to note the need for serious systemic reform in Kenya, restarting the flow of aid should not be the priority for the new president (\"Kenya\'s chance for a new beginning\", December 30). Rather, Mwai Kibaki must target corruption at every level, from the highest government official to the low-level bureaucrats who routinely accept bribes for the most commonplace of tasks, such as paying utility bills or proving ownership. However, he will also need to protect formal property rights, promote the rule of law and encourage free markets.

IPN Opinion article

February 22, 2003
The growth rate in free economies across the world is a lesson for a country like Nigeria. When the government keeps intervening in the economy, the market is constantly blamed for any crisis that may later ensue. In actual fact, the reason for market failure should be attributed to government intervention and consequent economic distortions. Government subsidies are one such distortion. Government subsidies are a disincentive to public enterprises. Subsidies have made them less efficient and innovative, and have made them an avenue for enriching government cronies and lackeys. They have destroyed competition, which, in turn, is largely responsible for the inability of local industries to compete in the quickly globalizing world.

IPN Opinion article

January 28, 2003
Blindly raped by its leaders, and majority of its people in the grip of misery, Africa remains the major concern of the western nations. The sight of a good number of suffering Africans is horrible enough to pinch the collective conscience of the developed world. That Africans need assistance is not open question, but the kind of help that can free them from the painful hold of suffering is now a subject of debate. The rich nations seem to impute the absence of development in Africa to lack of resources. Erroneously, one way they think can help Africa is by doling out money to their governments.

IPN Opinion article

January 22, 2003
The Centre for Independent Studies had a recent visit from three leading liberals: Manuel Ayau, the President emeritus of the private Universidad Francisco Marroqu'n and an experienced business leader from Guatemala; Barun Mitra, the founding Director of the Liberty Institute, a free-market think tank in New Delhi; and James Shikwati, the founder and Director of Kenya\'s Inter-Region Economic Network in Nairobi. They spoke with Wolfgang Kasper, Senior Fellow at the Centre, about aid, poverty, the law and trade.

IPN Opinion article

January 22, 2003
Nigeria will better off if it could follow the worthy examples of Hong Kong and Singapore. Both countries were once in the league of corrupt nations but realizing its implications on economic growth and development, they quickly shift from being very corrupt to relatively clean and become good examples for other countries. Nigeria will have to take a cue from them. Stemming corruption requires more than official statements. It requires stepping on big toes. It requires economic will. Political power to the people is not enough. Government relinquishing most of its economic power to the people must complement it. This is desirable. Unless this is timely done, Nigeria might have perilously embarked on a self-paved road to serfdom.

IPN Opinion article

January 16, 2003
Our fragile democracy will not hold long if people are the uninformed and misinformed. Only liberalised media will create the competition necessary to ensure that people get accurate information. Most important of all, the new government must limit its role in economic activity and allow Kenyans to choose freely what they would rather do to create wealth.

IPN Opinion article

January 14, 2003
With nary an exception, countries that gained their independence from colonial powers in the 1960s turned immediately to socialist central planning. The intellectual classes were nearly unanimous in their support for socialism and thoughtful opposition was virtually nonexistent. Now, the abysmal poverty and corruption those policies produced are animating a whole new class of activists and intellectuals on behalf of free market alternatives. New think tanks springing up, like IPPA in Nigeria and IREN in Kenya, are almost all committed to thrusting a stake through the heart of the socialist idea.

IPN Opinion article

December 31, 2002
When liberal economists speak of ëthe market', they usually refer to national and international markets, with widely dispersed property rights. But this world was only brought into existence through state-sponsored violenceóthe enclosure laws in 19th century England which destroyed the village commons; the settlement of new lands, in North America and Australia, which overturned the traditional rights of native peoples; the gradual encroachment of national markets on local governance and community-based institutions right around the world.

IPN Opinion article

December 16, 2002
Politicians in all countries love policies known to prevent prosperity and we must therefore assume that they, or their advisors, want poverty. There is good news for them: the causes of wealth and poverty ñ free markets and interventionism respectively ñ are now so well known that state-of-the art strategies for maximising poverty are within their reach.