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Senegalese cook Amy Gueye always tries to use imported rice at her family-run restaurant in Dakar, knowing that customers prefer the taste to home-grown varieties when they buy her spicy rice-based fish and chicken dishes.

Editorial: The UN is right to warn that governments risk a worldwide recession precipitated by excessive rate rises

We are in the toughest period the world economy has faced since the creation of the multilateral system more than three-quarters of a century ago. A quadruple shock of Covid, climate change, conflict and cost-of-living has undone years of hard-fought development gains. As financial conditions tighten, even countries that had…

Cryptocurrencies have become popular in African and other developing countries. That’s according to a policy brief released recently by UNCTAD, a United Nations agency. Significant proportions of Kenya (8.5%), South Africa (7.1%) and Nigeria’s (6.3%) populations are using these digital currencies. In June, the Central African Republic adopted bitcoin as…

With two days to go until opening to the public, workers rush to put the finishing touches on the Kwena Square shopping complex, a shiny $13 million sign that South Africans are defying the global "retail apocalypse".

The south Asian country is the first to buckle under economic pressures compounded by Russia’s war on Ukraine, but it won’t be the last

The war in Ukraine has sent commodity prices soaring, creating shock waves across poorer countries already hard hit by the pandemic. The UN has warned "profound social anxiety" was spreading – especially in North Africa and the Middle East.