Wiwa said poverty and hopelessness has increased, largely due to a lack of basic infrastructure.
Instead, it links consumers' purchases to the development of basic infrastructure — an effort, in part, to address some of the pitfalls of the company's existing social-enterprise strategy.
Yet, despite strong growth and a bigger GDP, it still lags behind South Africa, the continent's only G20 member, in terms of basic infrastructure and governance.
Using data on 18 sub-Saharan African countries, the authors find a negative relationship between ethnic inequality and the provision of basic infrastructure such as electricity and sewerage.
The challenges involved in staging a vote in the largest country in Africa – in the absence of basic infrastructure, and amid widespread instability – are immense.
Others encompass public-private partnership and, in some areas (particularly pockets of basic infrastructure financing), the public sector needs to take the lead.
Mr. Alves said a new infrastructure plan — including a $600 million redevelopment of the airport, the construction of boutique hotels and the improvement of basic infrastructure like roads — would increase tourism.
Nicholas D. Kristof is right to focus on the difference between emergency relief and the kind of basic infrastructure improvements that can spur economic development and raise living standards ("Land of Penny Pinchers," column, Jan . 5.
Africa's energy problems go much deeper to questions of basic infrastructure, and are made harder by the fact that there are so many land-locked countries facing high import prices for everything.
The people have mostly remained very poor, and the abysmal development of basic infrastructure in much of the country testifies to the unequal spread of the benefits of that expansion.
If transplanted to a typical low- or middle-income Asian city, Sandy would almost certainly have resulted in far greater damage to property, loss of lives and overall disruption of basic infrastructure and services.
