Adviser to Ethiopian PM Abiy, Kenyan Pres Kenyatta, and US Cong Davis, All Understand: Infrastructure Essential for Economic Growth

Dr Arkebe Oqubay speaking during virtual TIPS 2020 Forum meeting
August 4, 2020

All three articles in this post highlight the essential role of infrastructure in building real economic growth in African nations as well as the United States. We are living in a perilous period of economic breakdown and loss of hundreds of thousands of lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of impoverished people around the world are threatened with hunger, and tens of millions more are being forced into poverty and extreme poverty as a result of this dual crisis. Massive development of infrastructure, including nuclear energy, should be financed through public sector credit and a National Infrastructure Bank as part of a  “New Economic Architecture,” which is urgently required. The economic principles to finance infrastructure and an expanding agro-manufacturing sector was brilliantly put forth by President George Washington’s Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton*. The levels of infrastructure required cannot be done by relying on the so called free-market, but must be accomplished by government intervention. When people are dying and suffering, you do not depend on the “markets.” Nations have the obligation to provide for the general welfare of their citizens.

Without infrastructure and manufacturing, AfCFTA will fall short – senior African policymaker

“An Ethiopian senior minister and special adviser to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has cautioned that, without major infrastructure investment and the development of manufacturing capacity, African countries will not be in a position to take full advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), which is poised to liberalize trading conditions across 55 countries.”
Dr Arkebe Oqubay has been at the center of Ethiopian industrial policy making for over 25 years. He is the founding Chancellor of the Addis Ababa Science and Technology University (AASTU), and in 2015 he authored Made in Africa: Industrial Policy in Ethiopia

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Kenya on Course for $5 Billion Nuclear Plant to Power Industry

  • Plans to expand nuclear-power capacity fourfold by 2035
  • Kenya expects peak demand to top 22,000 megawatts by 2031

The government looks to expand its nuclear-power capacity fourfold from a planned initial 1,000 megawatts by 2035, the Nuclear Power and Energy Agency said in a report on the National Environment Management Authority’s website. The document is set for public scrutiny before the environmental watchdog can approve it, and pave the way for the project to continue.

President Uhuru Kenyatta wants to ramp up installed generation capacity from 2,712 megawatts as of April to boost manufacturing in East Africa’s largest economy. Kenya expects peak demand to top 22,000 megawatts by 2031, partly due to industrial expansion, a component in Kenyatta’s Big Four Agenda. The other three are improving farming, health care and housing.

The nuclear agency is assessing technologies “to identify the ideal reactor for the country,” it said in the report.

A site in Tana River County, near the Kenyan coast was preferred after studies across three regions, according to the report. The plant will be developed with a concessionaire under a build, operate and transfer model.

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US Congress introduces  H.R. 6422, the bill for a $4 trillion dollar National Infrastructure Bank (NIB) based on Hamiltonian principles

New Videos Show the Way Out of Crisis

*Alexander Hamilton’s Credit System Is Necessary for Africa’s Development

*Nations Must Study Alexander Hamilton’s Principles of Political Economy

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in the economic development policy of Africa for 30 years. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com

 

America’s Mission of Progress is Vitally Needed Today

Below is a political statement by Anton Chaitkin that was distributed at the McClendon Dinner at the National Press Club, Washington DC, on  May 1, 2019. Mr Chaitkin is a colleague of mine, who is also in the process of writing a new book, American Prometheus

I release this brief statement on my website because, I share Mr Chaitin’s  vision for a better America, founded on the profound principles of our Founding Fathers and those statesmen who followed in their footsteps. Today, more than ever, the United States of America needs leadership with a bold vision for the future that will benefit the entire world.

May 5, 2019

Return to America’s Mission of Progress

It has become necessary to speak plainly about the wrong path America has taken. In the half century since the assassinations of our President and other popular leaders, our country has disastrously changed its world strategy and its economic aims.

The United States formerly had the world’s highest standard of living. Our best leaders always fought for progress, towards a truly civilized standard of living for our own people and as the natural right of all mankind.

But we gave up our own productive industries, with their skills and high wages. And we stopped helping poor countries to become advanced, powerful societies. Yet a high standard of living is essential to a truly human life. Poverty and personal degradation are not natural conditions of a modern world.

Our best historic leaders saw war as an enemy. Our industrial and military strength were means to avoid war, not perpetrate it. Out best leaders cherished “peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

But we have come into war, constant and permanent war, breeding more terrorism and excusing more surveillance, brutality and revenge, degrading our society.

These policies came largely without debate, and with little protest. They reflect the interests of an Anglo-American financial establishment, not the reasoned judgement of citizens in a Constitutional republic.

We made progress when the profits of enterprise came from productive investment. That was our national strategy. But a vast gambling system now dominates the financial world, drawing off useful investment. As a result, our infrastructure is ruined, our transportation is decades behind the most advanced countries. Lawless offshore banking shelters fortunes from narcotics and other crimes. This system is kept in place through the financial and political power of those with ill-gotten wealth. It only floats until it sinks through systemic failure.

On our former road to peace and mutual prosperity, we sought cooperation with other nations for great enterprises, the universal spread of electricity and the manned exploration of our solar system. We are now told that those striving for advancement are our enemies, who must be strangled into weakness and forced to behave.

Accepting this nightmarish policy framework has brought our national politics to a dead end. Only a completely new path can now succeed.

America must return to its founding mission of progress.

To this end, we propose these first steps:

Re-enact the Glass Steagall law, to rein in lawless finance and guide banking to safe, productive investment.

Establish a National Infrastructure Bank, to reconstruct our shattered economy on modern lines.

Join with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, to bring modern times to our poor and backward planet.

Work with Russia on our common security and economic interests, to solve terrorism intelligently and prevent mutual extermination.

Reaffirm national sovereignty and cooperation for the common good, the principles which made America great and successful.

Though powerful interests will oppose these steps, only a return to national and global progress can unite our people and restore faith in our country.

We renounce the fear of speaking out.

We pledge ourselves to fight to restore America’s national mission of progress.