In emerging markets, manufacturing has historically been a source of productivity, growth, and jobs. Since the 1950s, industrialization has kept economies in Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe on a steady glide toward higher stages of development.

The recent revelation that more than 50 million Facebook profiles were harvested by app and given to political consultancy Cambridge Analytica has produced a backlash against the platform. But it is just the latest example of the risks associated with the Internet, which forms the core of today’s digital revolution.

Democratic governance is instrumental in delivering economic, social, scientific, technological, and cultural progress. Through generations of political stability the defining hallmark of which is equality, rule of law, and accountability, democratic governance speeds up development even more. No other systems were or could be able to deliver this.

One of the maladies the Ethiopian economy has battled over the past decade has been inflation. This economic ailment has created noticeable changes in the purchasing power of consumers. And though it was kept below double digits between July 2012 and June 2017, the past seven months has seen inflation hit the economy with renewed vigour. Headline inflation for January 2017 and February 2018 increased to 13.4Pct and 15.6Pct, respectively. To make matters worse, food price inflation soared to 18Pct in January 2017 and 20.9Pct in February 2018.

Over the past few years, leaks of documents such as the “Panama Papers” and the “Paradise Papers” have exposed the dark underbelly of globalization, and provoked indignant denunciations of tax avoidance from people around the world. Ordinary workers have no choice but to pay their taxes. But, apparently, multinational corporations and wealthy individuals can get away with paying hardly anything.

At this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, participants did not question the basic building blocks of growth in today’s global economy: free markets, good governance, and investment in human capital and infrastructure. But they did criticize how unfairly the benefits of growth are being distributed. Rightly so: without a strong policy response aimed at building a more inclusive growth model, rising populism and economic nationalism will impair the functioning of markets and overall macroeconomic stability – potentially cutting short the current global recovery.

Respected economists have long pointed out that gross domestic product (GDP) is an inadequate measure of economic development and social well-being, and thus should not be policymakers’ sole fixation. Yet we have not gotten any closer to finding a feasible alternative to GDP.

On October 11, 2017, the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) devaluated the birr by 15Pct against the basket of major hard currencies. According to the press briefing given by Yohannes Ayalew, vice governor of the NBE, the motive behind the devaluation was to encourage exports and attract investment.

Among the common risks investors interested in African countries like Ethiopia often mention are investment protection, dividend (profit) and capital repatriation. A typical concern investors bring up at deal sourcing discussions may include details of a ‘forex-crunch’ they had heard about either from local operators, or fellow investors. Whether these fears be real, perceived, or imagined, what matters is that they make an impact in investors’ minds.