A change in political metaphors

Obama should take up cricket. This, according to the FT's Michael Fullilove, whose opinion piece makes for a fantastic read on how cricket explains foreign policy. If only us Americans had known this sooner. 

They've got the power

Last week, Botswana’s energy utility, Botswana Power Corporation, signed a contract with Chinese firms for the development of a 600 megawatts (MW) power station. The contract was concluded with China's construction consortium, China National Electric Equipment Corporation and Shenyang Blower Works Electro-Mechanics Import and Export Co. Ltd (the CNEEC-SBW Consortium), to build the Morupule B power station. With this investment, Botswana aims to expand its generating capacity and eventually reduce dependency on energy imports. 

From, Doing Business Blog

The pitfalls of a bonus culture

Paul Collier has an interesting comment piece in today's Guardian. In it, he argues that the culture of  high-powered incentives that led to the U.S. financial crisis is likewise behind Africa's governance crisis:

The financial crisis in the developed world and the long, slow crisis of African governance have one feature in common: what economists coyly term "high-powered incentives". The financial crisis was the consequence of management decisions in the financial sector. For decades people in these pos-itions had behaved prudently, which is why their businesses built up good reputations. Why was the behaviour of the present vintage so different? The answer is the introduction of high-powered incentives - or, more intelligibly expressed, obscenely large payments tied to some specified performance. The theory is that such incentives overcome problems of managerial shirking and niceties such as putting the workforce's interests before those of shareholders.

This simple theory provided the intellectual veneer for grotesque greed: high-powered incentives are, in reality, very damaging. And I have watched them wreak havoc in the apparently very different context of African politics. The bonuses Africa's leaders pay themselves are sizable even by the breathtaking standards of the developed world; like financial managers, the politicians have a massive incentive to achieve the performance benchmark. In the financial sector the benchmark has been quarterly measured profits; in Africa it has been winning an election.