Paying for a Distant War by Alister Bull

Most African economies swept into 2026 with the wind in their sails after recording the best growth in a decade. Then the US and Israel attacked Iran. Just like the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the Covid pandemic two years earlier, the continent will pay the price for far-away events that it didn’t start. A Middle …

Wes Streeting a footnote by Lawson Akhigbe

In the long and colourful history of the Labour Party there have been two universally acknowledged suicide notes: the 1983 manifesto and the 2019 manifesto. One was so catastrophic that even senior Labour figures described it as “the longest suicide note in history.” The other arrived decades later to prove Labour still possessed both the …

Concrete Profits: How Nigeria Built a Cement Cartel in the Name of Industrial Policy

Nigeria sits on vast deposits of limestone—the primary raw material for cement. By the logic of classical economics, that should translate into cheap cement, competitive markets, and a thriving construction sector. Instead, Nigeria has some of the highest cement prices relative to income levels anywhere in the world. This is not a paradox. It is …