November 21, 2024
Publications
Book reviews Policy issues

Bad Samaritans: the Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat To Global Prosperity

Author: Ha-Joon Chang Publisher: Random House, 2007 276 pages. You’ve probably heard the Gospel of Free Market: if a country wants to break the cycle of poverty and achieve economic growth and prosperity, it should deregulate, open up its market, welcome investors, and unleash the power of the private sector. Nationalisation is anathema; protection is

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Apologetics

The case for Christianity part 1: The ontology of Christian theism

When you pick up, on a typical day, the arguments of atheists and agnostics against the Christian worldview, you almost always get the sense of straw men on the loose. You hear of god up there “in the sky”, of faith portrayed as emotional crutch, once relevant in the infancy of humanity, now useful only

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Devotionals Publications

“Daddy Pastors”: a matter of ignorance and fear

In the first installment of this series, we focused on the idea that the advent of Daddy Pastors is associated with the struggle for domination and control. In this series, we want to explore the issues of ignorance and fear. In short, we say, if “Daddy Pastors” are launched by the desire to control and

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Devotionals Publications

“Daddy Pastors”: the struggle for domination and control

  In his second epistle to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul was quick to point out that, while he had the responsibility as a leader of the church to correct and rebuke erring believers, and encourage church discipline, he was still but a “fellow-worker”. It is not, he said, “that we have dominion over your

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Book reviews

Book Review: Pedagogy of the oppressed

  Author: Paulo Freire      Publisher: The Continuum Publishing Company                               Date: 1970 When Paulo Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the world was in the middle of fierce ideological war. The iron curtain was firmly shut, and the fire of anti-colonial struggle was burning wildly in the countries of Africa and Latin America. Nine years earlier,

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Book reviews Viewpoints

Book Review: The Mystery of Capital

Author: Hernando De Soto Transworld Publishers, 2000 276 pages “The hour of capitalism’s greatest triumph is its hour of crisis”. This is Hernando De Soto’s opening statement in what has now become a classic of property rights. He starts with a brief description of the “triumph” of capitalism and the end of the cold war.

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Institutions Invited talks

Nigeria: another way

Introduction The modern nation of Nigeria was born in 1960 amidst fanfare. As of then, forty six years had elapsed since the British amalgamation, in 1914, of the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria. The nationalist fathers fought a good fight, and it is instructive that diaspora students were at the heart of those nationalist

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Book reviews Institutions

The competitive advantage of nations

 (2nd edition) Author: Michael E. Porter Publisher: Palgrave, New York, 1998 855 pages Unlike David Landes’ Wealth and Poverty of Nations, which was unashamedly an euro-centric take on the political history of development, and unlike Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, the award winning anthropological history of development weakened by its far reaching environmental determinism,

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Apologetics Publications

Predestination and free will

A fresh look at Christian beliefs on the Ultimate Sovereignty of God and Significance of Humans   Introduction One of big questions that have attracted the attention of people throughout the ages is the question of the significance of human beings in the context of the absolute, final sovereignty of the all-powerful, all-knowing God. Across

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