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Zero to One
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (2014) by Peter Thiel (founder of PayPal and major startup funder thereafter) and Blake Masters (who took a course with Peter at Stanford, and using the extensive course notes produced the basis for this book). The crux of the book is vertical innovation […]
Tags: #Collaboration #Contrarian #Courage #Startups #Vertical Innovation
The Asian Aspiration
The Asian Aspiration: Why and How Africa Should Emulate Asia (2020), written by two Brenthurst Foundation employees (Greg Mills and Emily Van Der Merwe) and two former African leaders (Olusegun Obasanjo and Hailemariam Desalegn). The bulk of the book is 10 chapters presenting country case studies from Asia (including: Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, the […]
Tags: #Brenthurst Foundation #Development #Hailemariam Desalegn #Olusegun Obasanjo #The Asian Aspiration
The Act of Living
NOTE: This was a book review that was published in 2020. As a country with sustained levels of high macro-economic growth, Ethiopia has been suggested as amongst Africa’s Lions (Bhorat and Tarp, 2016), an economic grouping envisioned as potentially following the Asian Tigers of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Macro-economic growth does […]
Tags: #Addis Ababa #Anthropology #Di Nunzio #Ethiopia #The Act of Living
Rural Ethiopia in Transition
The WIDE project in Ethiopia is one of the few long-term qualitative projects following rural areas (starting rural research in 1994, and following the changes since). There are 20 communities being followed, unfortunately the so-called “emerging regions” are not included (Afar, Benishagul Gumuz, Gambella, Somali). The book “Rural Ethiopia in Transition – Selected Discussion Briefs, […]
Tags: #Alula Pankhurst #Catherine Dom #Ethiopia #Rural Ethiopia in Transition #WIDE Project
Cobalt Red
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives (2022) is a journalistic take on the mining of cobalt in DR Congo, written by Siddharth Kara (the author has published other books on modern slavery). This book focuses on cobalt, the mineral that is critical for nearly all of our rechargeable devices and […]
Gambling on Development
Dercon’s 2022 development studies book “Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose” will likely become one of the key readings for the field (and is endorsed by influential thinkers: Rory Stewart, Blattman, Yuen Yuen Ang). In a nutshell the argument is that development occurs when elites make a “development bargain”, taking various […]
Tags: #Development Bargain #Elite Bargain #Gambling on Development #Stefan Dercon
About me
Logan Cochrane
Logan is a Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and an Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last twenty years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Logan acts as a consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.
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