Blog - Center for International Private Enterprise

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The Baker’s Son

Nineteen year old Sadaar's father started a bakery several years ago, shortly after his family returned to Kabul. They lived in Peshawar, Pakistan for years as refugees, waiting for a time when they could return to their native Kabul, surrounded by the towering Parwan mountains. As we walked up to t...

Hope Grows in the Killing Fields

Jan Mohammad, Governor of Uruzgan Province, has known little but war throughout his life. A man with one eye, uneducated, yet wise from years of conflict against the Russians and the Taliban. His militia is everywhere, and when we arrive in a military convoy from the U.S. military base in Tarin ...

Development Banks and Anti-Corruption

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is taking the necessary steps to hold companies accountable for corrupt behavior. [ADB] last year banned 40 firms and 22 individuals from working for the multilateral agency due to corruption, the Manila-based bank said today. Since the bank began investigating corr...

Help Africa Help Itself

Is "doubling aid and forgiving debt" a good strategy for eliminating poverty in Africa? Bill Easterly certainly doesn't think so. He argues that such a strategy is not enough for getting the continent on the path of economic growth and prosperity in his op-ed in the Washington Post. The title ...

Revising the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention

When the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention was drafted in 1997 and entered into force in 1999, it was a significant step forward, to say the least, for efforts to combat bribery in international business transactions. Yet, more needs to be done, says a new report released by the Center for Global Devel...

Update on the Russian NGO Law

The passing of the Russian law on NGOs [see my earlier post on this] has stirred up a lot of controversy over the past several months. But, did the international development community and Russian NGOs worry too much too soon? Or not? Here is what the Moscow Times has to say: Despite sizzlin...

Overcoming obstacles to information

Language is the most fundamental unit in information gathering. Without it, human beings would have a limited capacity to communicate. Language has often been the cause of miscommunication and misunderstanding, a problem that is exacerbated by the lack of precision in translation. Sometimes, ther...

On Corruption in Africa

The Institute of Public Policy Analysis in Nigeria is soon to release a report on corruption (in its February Newsletter), which suggests that foreign aid contributes to the problem as elites skim off their portion at every level. Dr. Kasper, the author of the report, argues that 'corruption is a bl...

Russian Parliament Ratifies the U.N. Convention Against Corruption

Today, the Russian parliament – the State Duma – ratified the U.N. Convention Against Corruption. It took just over 2 years for Russia to ratify the Convention, which the country signed in December of 2003, and the ratification did not go easy: The voting was preceded by emotional s...

New President for Haiti

After much fanfare that a clean election had taken place in Haiti last weekend, social turmoil ensued as presidential aspirant, Rene Preval, appeared unable to win the election in the first round. Yesterday, the Haitian electoral council voted 7 to 2 to disqualify more than 80,000 blank ballots that...

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