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Greetings from Tunis!

This week's gathering in Washington DC for the annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF should be a wake for a dying global economic architecture, but unfortunately, a New International Economic Order cannot be born without African leadership to reposition the continent and the rest of the Global South away from the bottom of the global value chain. This is what I told the BBC Newsday on Monday. Click the image below to listen to the full interview.

At a critical side event during the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings, a broad coalition of labor leaders and civil society organizations gathered to examine the growing disconnect between the IMF’s rhetoric on social spending and the realities of its austerity-driven programs.

Co-organized by the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors, Global Social Justice, MENA Fem Movement, Human Rights Watch, Arab Reform Initiative, Akina Mama wa Afrika, and other key groups, the session—Austerity vs. Protection: Labor’s Perspective on the IMF’s Contradictory Social Spending Approach—highlighted the findings of a new ITUC study on the implementation of the IMF’s 2019 social spending strategy.

The discussion revealed that despite policy commitments to social protection, IMF programs continue to prioritize fiscal consolidation, often at the expense of essential public services and workers’ rights. Rather than reducing inequality, these measures have exacerbated social and economic divides.

The post April 22, 2025 | Side Event at the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings, Washington D.C. appeared first on End Austerity.

In a time of heightened geopolitical tensions, conflicts, genocides, systemic injustice, and ecological collapse, the call for global solidarity has never been more urgent. Sometimes, we feel overwhelmed, paralyzed, and stuck in a rot of despair and inaction. Instead of writing another analytical piece, I decided to rewrite this older poem hoping to inspire all of us to find some hope and courage, and to trigger the urge to act. I also asked one of my mentors, Rajani Kanth, who, unlike me, is a real poet and one of the best political economists I’ve ever known, to smooth out some rough edges in my writing. I’m always grateful for his thoughtful input. You should all follow and read his work here. Poetry is healing for the soul. And music adds some fun to it, which I did with the help of AI here. I hope you enjoy it.

I’m often asked whether BRICS is going to be the game-changer that will disrupt the current geopolitical hierarchy, dedollarize the system, and create a new multipolar word. My position has always been that we can’t dedollarize a system that hasn’t been structurally decolonized yet, and that no new multipolar world can be born without Africa and the rest of the Global South being repositioned away from the bottom of the global hierarchy and at the center of a New International Economic Order. I explained this on CGTN Africa recently when we discussed the outcomes of the 2024 BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia (read the Kazan Declaration). The gist of my argument is in this 2-minute clip below, but you can watch the full interview here.

We spent the last two weeks at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan at what was supposed to be The Climate Finance COP, but the United States and the rest of the Global North showed up empty handed with an intentional agenda of delaying, denying, distracting, blaming the victims, and greenwashing economic traps. In the end, COP29 was not about climate, it was about an economic and geopolitical hierarchy that is not supposed to be disturbed. Why? Because real climate action would imply that climate finance is development finance. Real climate action means high quality transformative climate finance in the form of grants (not loans), cancellation of all climate-related debts (not rescheduling), and the sharing/transfer of life-saving technologies to allow the Global South to manufacture and deploy the building blocks of climate resilience and adaptation; and that would unleash the full potential of the Global South as an economic powerhouse that is no longer locked at the bottom of the economic and geopolitical hierarchy (as outlined in our Just Transition report). And that potential is perceived by the Global North as a threat to be managed and eliminated, not as an opportunity for development and climate action.

Greetings from Shanghai!

This (long) post will encompass some brief comments and updates from my recent work, and will be followed by more detailed notes in the next few weeks. First, I spent the last few days in Shanghai, China lecturing at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai (July 8-23). The program is aimed for Ph.D. students, post-docs, and early career professionals who are entering academia and public policy government positions. This year’s theme is “Public Indebtedness and the Future of Human Development.” I spent close to six hours (split over two days) presenting “Global South Debt & Development: A Strategic Repositioning in a Multipolar World of Peace & Sustainable Prosperity,” and engaging in the most thoughtful discussions with 120 of the sharpest young minds in China. The future of the Global South is brighter. I will write more about this soon. Next, I will briefly highlight some recent events in Nairobi, Tegucigalpa, Tunis, and Havana.

Happy Earth Week!

Greetings from the belly of the beast! I’ve been in Washington DC over the last few days attending the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund the World Bank Group. Six months after the IMF-WBG meetings in Marrakesh, we are still struggling to get the conversation focused on what it takes to truly transform the international financial architecture and to decolonize the global economic system. Let me share a few reflections here.

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Greetings from Addis Ababa!

I’m on my way back to Nairobi. I spent the last 3 days in Rome at a UN expert group meeting on SDG2 (Ending Hunger) at the FAO, in preparation for the 2024 High-Level Political Forum that will be held in July 2024. It was a bit ironic that the FAO building where we held the meeting used to be the Italian Ministry of the Colonies under the Mussolini regime, and my main message to the FAO was about decolonizing the global economic architecture is a prerequisite for achieving the SDGs, including SDG2 to end hunger. It is 2024, and the global food system reflects the legacy of colonial and post-colonial hierarchies. This blog is a brief summary of my main message to the FAO. I have also co-authored a recent piece about SDG5 (gender equality).

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Greetings from Bogota,

I spent the week in Bogota, Colombia for a series of presentations and meetings with Colombian government senior officials in the ministry of finance, the ministry of mines and energy, as well as senior diplomats. I also had a chance to meet with several academics, think tanks, and civil society organizations. It’s been a very productive and inspiring week. Today I wanted to comment briefly on the EU-Egypt “partnership” and on the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial meeting, which will set the stage for COP29, now dubbed the Climate Finance COP. Will it deliver? Or will it be the COP where climate finance goes to die?

Greetings from Tunis!

It’s been a busy month. I have a few longer blogs that I post soon (preview below) but I wanted to share some quick updates and some resources that I think will be helpful. I spent the last few days in Tunis. I’ll post the updates in reverse chronological order. Yesterday, I did an. interview (in Arabic) with Radio SonFM on a show cleverly called Sans Emissions (Without Emissions, but also a play on words to say Sound Show). The full show is available here. We discussed green colonialism in the Global South, the Mattei Plan, the Non-Aligned Movement and G77+China South Summit in Kampala, fossil fuel economic entrapment, the so-called green industrialization of Namibia (new blog on this coming up soon), and most importantly, I discussed what I call the Bargain of the Century for the Global South, which I will write about soon.

Greetings from Beirut, Lebanon!

The World Social Forum in Nepal is an Open Space of social movements, NGOs, civil society organisations, trade unions, citizens who demand that “Another World is Possible”.  We believe that ending austerity is central to the aims of this assembly gathered in Kathmandu 15-19 February, and this is why we call for immediate attention to the crisis of austerity that is only getting worse, and demand for immediate action on many alternatives that exist to austerity.

Today, more than 6 billion people are suffering from austerity, so-called “fiscal consolidation” according to a recent study by the EndAusterity Campaign. We demand that governments immediately stop harmful public budget cuts in essential areas like education, health and social protection, and halt damaging reforms such as the privatization of public services and social security rights, which are exacerbating gender inequality, as women are the shock absorbers due to the subsidy they provide to the global economy through their unpaid domestic and care work. Instead of austerity cuts/reforms, governments must seek new sources of fiscal space to meet their Human Rights obligations and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Specifically, we, the undersigned social movements, civil society organisations, trade unions and academics demand that governments, regional organisations and multilateral organisations urgently:

Salamno from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia!

African football fans enjoyed some amazing football matches over the last few weeks. We celebrated our football superstars and our favorite teams during the 2023 African Cup of Nations (AFCON). However, a tournament that was moved to 2024 because of the climate-induced unfavorable and sometimes disastrous weather conditions that affect West Africa during the tropical rain season. And to add insult to injury, our AFCON has been hijacked by TotalEnergies as a platform to sportswash and greenwash its extraction, pollution, and abuse of the African continent. Decolonizing African football is just as important as decolonizing our economy, education, and just about every aspect of our lives. Ultimately, of course, we are talking about Decolonizing the Mind.

Greetings from Nairobi,

I am troubled by the number of African presidents, prime ministers, and senior officials who skipped the G77+China South Summit in Kampala last week, but flocked to Rome this week when they were summoned by the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni to attend the Italy-Africa Summit to be presented with the Mattei Plan for Africa. Since African leaders don’t have a plan for Africa, we will continue to be part of someone else’s plans, be it Europe, the US, China, or the G7 (which Italy is presiding this year). It is 2024, so colonial plans come dressed up in PR-proof rhetoric with partnership slogans like “not predatory, not paternalistic, but not charitable either.” That is how Meloni described Italy’s “vision of development in Africa.”

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Good morning from Kampala!

This week Uganda is not only the Pearl of Africa, but also the symbolic capital of the Global South. Uganda is hosting the 19th Non-Aligned Movement Summit (Jan 15-20) and the G77+China Third South Summit (Jan 21-23) at Speke Resort & Convention Center Munyonyo. I have written about Uganda’s leadership role in the Global South during after my last visit to Kampala back in November in preparation for the South Summit. Coincidentally (or not), while Global South countries gathered to discuss South-South cooperation and how to face the challenges of debt, development and climate change, others turned their attention to Davos, Switzerland where global business elites summoned government officials and leaders of global financial institutions to influence global economic thinking in a way that serves and protects their interest, while pretending to care about inequality, poverty, and climate change.

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At the 2024 World Social Forum in Kathmandu, the End Austerity Campaign hosted a powerful session addressing the harmful social consequences of austerity measures—particularly their disproportionate impact on women.

The session featured high-level speakers, including the Executive Directors of Oxfam, Financial Transparency International, and Global Social Justice, among others. Discussions focused on the urgent need to move away from austerity-driven policies and emphasized the wide range of financing alternatives available to governments that can lead to socially just and sustainable development outcomes.

The event culminated in the launch of the Kathmandu Statement to End Austerity, a bold declaration signed by participants, reinforcing the global call for economic policies rooted in equity and human rights.

The post World Social Forum Session Calls for an End to Austerity and Promotes Fair Financing Alternatives appeared first on End Austerity.

Good afternoon from Nairobi!

The fact that it took 28 COPs to finally name fossil fuels as the root cause of climate change is sobering. And the fact the we ended up with the weakest possible language of "transitioning away from fossil fuels" while most rich countries plan to spend billions of dollars building new fossil fuel infrastructure, and avoiding the responsibility to finance a just transition for developing countries is the ultimate demonstration of Global North hypocrisy. The major loophole one can sail an LNG carrier through is the language around "unabated" fossil fuels, which relies on unproven and expensive technologies of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) that are designed to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry.

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Good morning from Dubai at COP28!

Climate finance requires a minimum of $2.4 trillion of transformative grant-based investment and transfer of technology for climate adaptation and mitigation by 2030. We are nowhere near that target at the end of COP28. Climate finance is a climate debt owed by the historic polluters of the Global North to Global South countries that are on the front lines of climate change. The Global North is in default and is refusing to pay its debt.

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Good morning from Nairobi!

I’m getting ready to go to COP28 in Dubai, UAE in a few hours. And, of course, I have two things on my mind: phasing out fossil fuels and transformative climate finance. Let’s start with fossil fuels. I was thrilled to see that yesterday (December 2), President Gustavo Petro announced that Colombia would formally join the bloc of nation-states seeking to negotiate a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Colombia is now the 10th country to call for an international treaty to phase out fossil fuels with a comprehensive just transition framework. This is historic because Colombia is the first major fossil fuel exporter to endorse the Treaty initiative.

Greetings from Accra, Ghana!

It’s been a hot, humid, and wonderful week in Accra. I gave a keynote speech at the 11th Pan-African Conference on Illicit Financial Flows and Taxation (Nov. 22-24). The title of my speech was “A Pan-African Vision for Structural Transformation: We can’t decarbonize a system that hasn’t been decolonized yet.” You can watch the video here, including the very insightful panel discussion with my dear colleagues Mukupa Nsenduluka (Tax Justice Network Africa), Titus Gwemende (Open Society Foundations), Jason Braganza (AFRODAD), Natalie Mwila (Center for Trade Policy and Development). and concluding remarks by Dr. Patrick Olomo Ndazana (African Union Commission). This was for a session titled “The International Financial Architecture and Africa’s Extractive Industry: Answering the Climate Change Question.”

Greetings from Tunis!

It’s almost the end of November but it feels like summer. I was tempted to go to the beach, but I was too busy, unfortunately. The drought is still in full effect. No rain yet. Water levels in the major dams are below 30% of capacity. Water cuts are not uncommon in the evening in major coastal cities, and unfortunately, the interior towns often experience water shortages for weeks at a time, not to mention farmers who struggles to get any access to irrigation in recent years. And yet, Tunisia has major plans to produce water-intensive green hydrogen to export to Europe!

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I’ve been getting a lot of requests lately to comment on climate finance and what to expect from the upcoming COP28 meeting in Dubai. I will share some thoughts here and link to some sources and recent interviews/comments I have made.

Greetings from Quito, Ecuador, the Center of the World!

I am here with a small group of colleagues from across the Global South for a workshop on debt and development. It was the beginning of an amazing collaborative effort that will unfold over the next few months (more on this in due course). And it was a wonderful opportunity to visit the Mitad del Mundo (the Middle of the World) at the 0 latitude point on the equator (which pre-Incas native people have identified with GPS-like accuracy and marked it on Mount Katequilla, which means he who follows the moon), where we took turn finding our perfect balance (balancing that egg!) and enjoying samples of the best Ecuadorian chocolate and coffee.