Fraym's Africa Urban Markets Index

Africa is in the midst of a massive and historic transformation. Rapid urbanization, rising incomes, a youth bulge, and the diffusion of technology are combining to create exciting future centers of economic growth and opportunity. Richard Florida wrote in Rise of the Creative Class that “human creativity is the ultimate economic resource” and that “denser cities are smarter and more productive.”

Yet, very little data are available about Africa’s burgeoning urban clusters. Most economic, social, and consumer data are provided on a national basis or through costly one-off surveys. Fraym’s proprietary data platform can do better.

For anyone wanting to pinpoint Africa’s largest, wealthiest, and most networked populations, we created the Fraym Urban Markets Index. The Index estimates and ranks every geographic cluster on the continent with at least 300,000 people (n=169 cities) on three dimensions:

• Economic activity. What is the GDP for the city’s actual geospatial footprint? 
• Consumers. How many people live in a home with a car, motorbike, television, or refrigerator? 
• Connectivity. How networked is the city by trade and air travel? 

Three highlights from the Index:

• Cairo, Cairo, Cairo. The clear winner is Egypt’s capital, which tops the overall index and each of the three dimensions. While Johannesburg (2) and Lagos (3) are not surprising, some of the other Top 10 may be more unexpected, like Luanda (4), Kinshasa (5), and Khartoum (8). 
• West Africa > East Africa. In fact, the consumer class of Lagos is roughly the same size as all thirteen cities in the East African Community combined. 
• The Franco-underdogs. Several lesser-known Francophone cities far outranked better-known English-speaking capitals. Douala (23), Yaoundé (24), Ouagadougou (26), and Bamako (28) all outranked Lusaka (30), Kampala (37), Harare (51), and Kigali (61). 

Read the full Fraym Urban Markets Index paper with methodology and more takeaways (including a few other surprises) here.

Chicken-Hawk

My roommate remembered this great article in The Atlantic while we were watching  Bradley Cooper and Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper".  "The Tragedy of the American Military" is a great read for people trying to understand America's fascination with the armed forces, and why America keeps entering one losing battle after another since the Second World War.  

The Problem With Patriotism

I recently read Ramchandra Guha's article in HT, entitled, "Excessive love of one’s state is less harmful than that of one’s country", which talks about regional pride in literature and culture.  This debate was sparked by Guha's comparison of Kannada polymath Shivarama Karanth with Bengali literary god, Rabindranath Tagore.  I am not interested in this argument.  Personally, I believe, Bengali intellectualism and literary elitism is in decline and like the British, we are living off by selling the family silver (so to speak).  

No, what I am more interested in is exploring the idea of patriotism.  Being blindly loyal to some arbitrary division of land or world view, is an idea so abstract that I can't really fathom the need or requirement for it.  To me, patriotism, for country, religion, or an idea, if anything, is detrimental to the fabric of tolerant societies and a marker for regression.  In Tagore's poem, Where the Mind is Without Fear, he writes, and I paraphrase, "...let me awake in a world that is not broken up by narrow domestic walls" - a sentiment that resonates with me.

When I was backpacking through Europe several years ago, the political pub talk revolved around the wisdom of including the ten new countries to the European Union.  What was most striking about these conversations, and we see in the political set up of Europe today, is the rise of right wing sentiments in Western Europe.  In the recent EU elections, the anti-EU parties enjoyed a significant bump as outlined by this Telegraph article in May.

In my limited opinion, this "right-wing swing" is essentially a form of xenophobia in disguise.  The EU, I always felt, was the natural direction of humanity's future, a step towards global political and social unification, but it seems our basic need for a "us and them" framework is too overwhelming.  Give us aliens to fight and we're going to come together, otherwise we're going to find our own aliens... in the case of Europe, that's everyone who isn't, well, Western European.

Part of this "us and them" mentality is buried under the guise of patriotism.  "Self-interest" and "self-preservation" is tantamount to patriotism, and it is this kind of backward thinking that negates the momentum towards a politically and socially cohesive world.

In the context of India and Pakistan, patriotism rears its head when we're playing a cricket match or we're at war, and somehow brings out the worst in our generalizations about each other.  I've met many Pakistanis in my life and I've enjoyed their company very much.  Of course, that in itself is a generalization, and probably holds true for the 1 percent liberally educated urban youth I have interacted with.  My point is that we have no right to use the label of patriotism for actions and words that dehumanize people in a country, idea, or religion that is not ours.  Patriotism, like the practice of religion should be private and personal.  Rather than slap on some face paint when there is a cricket match, if we were really patriotic, we would treat our fellow citizens with respect, and not urinate by the side of the road or treat the country like shit.

I am aware of the argument that the need for barriers is seeded in animal instinct.  Chimpanzees, wolves and other animals that live in some form of social structure, display tendencies of divisiveness; acting in the interest of the pack or herd against other packs or herds.  However, considering we have put a human on the moon, is it really a legitimate argument to claim animal instinct as the basis for the most divisive notion we have in society?  Can we not say that, we, as a species, are better than wolves? [1]

All patriotism has really done is reinforce the imaginary boundaries that separate groups of people, who in all likelihood, under other circumstances could get along.  I'm not trying to demean the idea of patriotism, just the way we practice it today [2].

[1] The same applies to religion.
[2] I have nothing against wolves per se.

IBDP International Development Lecture Slides

2013-14 International Relations Lectures Semester I

History and Perspective - Cool Stuff!

Live Leak hosted a fantastic video of the changing political geography of Europe and Asian Minor from 1000 AD to the present day.  Fascinating stuff if you like history and geography and politics.  Ideally I would have liked a time clock to go with the video too, but it is about 5 years for every 1 second.  Original source.

The blog, "Wait But Why", posted another fascinating graphic about time and perspective.  Think of it as the Total Perception Vortex on paper!

Have a look - source.

Lastly, for an epic burn, have a look at the Kickstart submission about Obama's duplicitous foreign policies.

Have a good weekend!

Oh Syria... Why You Vex Me?

Forget the memes, forget John McCain playing poker on his phone during a Senate hearing on Syria and tweeting ":( I lost", forget Miley Cyrus twerking (hey Spellcheck, this is a real word now), forget Obama's Nobel Prize for Peace... what I want to know is, is the war going to hurt export of hummus?  Because I love hummus... Let's get serious people.

Photo credit: Tumblr

Welcome Back!

Dear class of 2014, 

Welcome back to your senior year at KIS.  I hope you all had a refreshing summer and now let's get ready to put the pedal to the metal...

We have a new tardy and absence policy as well as a new late submission of work policy.

We also have a lot of ground to cover, so I hope you are all prepared.

I will continue to use this space by putting up new thoughts, ideas, data resources, and interesting news articles, so keep an eye out.

Good luck!

Best,

Things I Hear in Class...

I hear things.  Some mindbogglingly insane things in my class.  Some, require documentation for posterity.  This is my attempt to do so... (no names are used to protect the identity of such genius, but these are 11th and 12th graders)

An answer in my last Economics test...
I believe that Mr. Maity is amazing teacher (A)
Awesome suits, looking classy everytime. (B)
I can sense that he is also an amazing pitcher (A)
Mr. Maity is like a lime. (B)
Sour at first, but becomes sweeter. (A)
I'll study a lot for the next test, I so sorry...

Student: Isn't Belgium in China?

An answer in my latest Economics exam...

"Since I do not know the answer, here is a short story about economy.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Econ.  He was always sick and his body immune systems were poor because his blood cells, red blood cells lacked.  One day, blood cells in the chromosomes of his abdomen were hurting.  So he went to toilet to digest his blood cells.  The atom inside the electrons of his blood cells started neutralizing with hydrochloric acid that he by mistakely drank.  So when H20 and other nutrients and dirts were coming through his anus, it was so painful.  When they all came out, the was like "oh, my..." Later this story was pass through his friends and they called him "Econohmy" which later became one of the study subjects.  Therefore, Econohmy, as h tends to 1 limit = Economy. d(Econohmy)/dx = Economy. [sic]"  

True story

“If there is high debt the government cannot invest and the consumer confidence of the population is less, because there is a high chance of firms to go bank robbed [sic]”

Student: Won't increasing pornography increase the population?

Student: Sir, great news!

Me: What?

Student: We stopped farming and started paying taxes!

Me: So, anyone know why we celebrate Teachers' Day?

Student: Someone died, isn't it?

Me: Natural manure is a way of increasing soil fertility.

Student: Why are they using man-whores on fields?

Me: Anyone know who was responsible for the Bhopal Gas Tragedy?  I'll give you a hint they are a British company involved in the Olympics.

Student: Marks and Spencer?

Me: Anyone know who started the First Gulf War?

Student: Stalin?

(On receiving the test paper)

Student: Oh this is positively orgasmic!

Me: First Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, anyone?

Student: Yao-Ming or someone like that?