Features

Dissension betwixt the peers

Poison Ivy appears to have scant regard for comment in the media, advice from business leaders or pressure from think tanks and foreign institutions. Perhaps a review by one of her peers might change that.

01 May 2008

The government appears to be committed, as a leading member of the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), to the notion of "peer review", which extends to economic management. This being the case, recent comments by the Ugandan counterpart of communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, reported in Business Day, might be more influential than the views of the assorted former colonialists, foreign imperialists, racist Afro-pessimists and stooges of global capitalism that populate the local media.

It is, of course, entirely true that Africans know best how their own needs are served. That is a core principle on which free market economics is based. The subjective theory of value holds that only the participants in free and voluntary economic exchange can determine the value of what is traded. Once established, that price is, by definition, fair value and both parties, by definition, gain wealth from the transaction. If it were otherwise, at least one party would not have agreed to the deal.

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