The Covid-19 crisis caused a major economic slowdown worldwide. We need to mitigate the slowdown in a sustainable manner that not only provides short term stimulus, but also supports long-term growth, fairly distributed across the globe. Moreover, there are major challenges facing the financing of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This proposal aims to formulate …
“Blockchain technology is going to change everything”. This claim was made many times over the past several years in many different forms. And we are still waiting to see the change. Skeptics, like Jesse Fredrik, argue that blockchain is a solution in search of a problem. The technology is yet to prove itself and deliver on …
Cryptocurrencies are causing measurable disruptions in the finance world. The speculative nature of many of these currencies casts doubts on their economic value and their role in improving the prosperity of the lives of human beings. But the underlying technology, the blockchain technology and the cryptographic techniques, are obviously of immense potential. The question, however, …
Detective Gregory: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention? Sherlock Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. Detective Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time. Sherlock Holmes: That was the curious incident! The Adventure of Silver Blaze There is something curious about …
We cannot afford to keep stumbling from one crisis to the next — Angela Merkel (2009) The title of this article is the title of a speech delivered in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 by former European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet. Although his call was made 14 years ago, it seems as relevant today …
Introduction In 2003, African Union Member Countries committed themselves to ending hunger in Africa by 2025, later known as the Maputo Declaration. With two years remaining, this blog focuses on the performance of IsDB Sub-Saharan Africa Member Countries (IsDB SSA MCs). To achieve the goal of ending hunger, the declaration’s primary aim was to allocate …
The world is heating up even quicker than expected. Temperature records continue to be broken in 2024, with droughts, wildfires and extreme heat affecting more vulnerable people and communities around the world. In developing countries, where the impacts of climate change are felt most severely, the vast majority of people, jobs and property are not insured. …
The most well-known historical episode of resource scarcity occurred in Egypt during the time of Prophet Yusuf (peace be upon him). The King of Egypt had a dream in which seven fat cows were devoured by seven skinny ones, and seven green ears of corn were accompanied by seven dry ones (The Quran, 12:43-49). This …
Introduction Throughout history, expansive oceans have served as viable trade routes, facilitating the interconnectedness and exchange of cultures among nations through the movement of goods and intellectual interchanges. The revolutionary introduction of containerized shipping in 1956 laid the groundwork for the profound integration of global economies, culminating in the phenomenon we now describe as globalization. …
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz once remarked that debt financing without bankruptcy is like Hamlet without the Prince. Or, to borrow from our culture, it is like Qais without Laila! Bankruptcy is not a minor footnote in the story of modern finance — it is a central character in debt financing, shaping incentives, costs, and risks for both private and public …
The Takaful industry, grounded in mutual assistance, shared responsibility, and ethical finance, stands at a transformative crossroads. Driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, a new model of takaful, often referred to as TakafulTech, is emerging to enhance transparency, efficiency, and community governance. These technologies automate insurance processes while reinforcing Takaful’s original social and ethical …
Blockchain technology is famously considered a “trust machine”. It is a machine (a set of code and procedures) that will make transactions reliable without the need to trust any particular person. In other words, the blockchain replaces trust of persons with trust of computational systems. But there is a little problem. What makes the machine …
There is a wealth of writings on the shortcomings of mainstream, neoclassical economics. But there is yet to emerge a coherent framework for an alternative economic paradigm. The COVID-19 crisis is an opportunity to address this matter in fresh light This short article is an attempt to outline one such a framework. What is Different …
Money is at the heart of any financial system. It is the “joints” that link markets across space and time. As long as money performs its functions, markets tend to allocate resources efficiently and allow participants to be more productive and therefore more prosperous. As money is a prerequisite for the normal functioning of markets, …
Inflation is a major problem for modern economies. Over the years, the problem shifted from one extreme to the other: from “the great inflation” in the 1960s and 1970s, to “the death of inflation” and “inflation myth” in the 1990s and 2000s, to the “deflation monster” in 2010s, and most recently, to “the biggest inflation …
Ideas generate knowledge, research develops and shapes it. But what we choose to explore is often subjective. Hence it is important what questions we ask and how we formulate them. I want to present six points for what matters in setting the direction of research in Islamic economics and finance. The purpose here is not …
Introduction The surge in inflation that followed the recovery from the 2020 global recession has prompted monetary tightening in several advanced economies (AEs) and emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), which exacerbates the challenges of sustainable development financing. Against this backdrop, debt situations in developing countries have continued deteriorating over the past decade. More than …
We cannot afford to keep stumbling from one crisis to the next — Angela Merkel (2009) The title of this article is the title of a speech delivered in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 by former European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet. Although his call was made 14 years ago, it seems as relevant today …
Introduction Over the past few decades, Islamic finance has gained significant recognition as a viable alternative to conventional finance. In the early 2000s, the estimated value of Islamic finance assets was roughly USD 200 billion. Despite facing various financial crises, the industry has seen remarkable growth and is now valued at USD 3.25 trillion as …
Introduction In 2003, African Union Member Countries committed themselves to ending hunger in Africa by 2025, later known as the Maputo Declaration. With two years remaining, this blog focuses on the performance of IsDB Sub-Saharan Africa Member Countries (IsDB SSA MCs). To achieve the goal of ending hunger, the declaration’s primary aim was to allocate …
Introduction While the political and security-related challenges in West Africa have risen recently, the political turmoil that unfolded in Niger in July 2023 has raised more significant attention and concern globally. Niger’s strategic location at the intersection of North, West, and Central Africa (Figure 1), its mineral resources and its vast land of 1,267,000 km² …
Introduction The global economy and the international financial system have been rattled by crises of varying sources since the start of the new millennium – from the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s to the 2007-2009 global financial crisis. Over the past couple of years, the effects of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, …
The debt burden on developing countries is significant and debt servicing in this post-COVID-19 and war-torn era is difficult. Therefore, policymakers, as well as multilateral institutions are already quite concerned about the current debt vulnerabilities worldwide. Debt was already excessively high before the first COVID-19 lockdown and then the Ukrainian war is currently adding more …
Introduction BRIC is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, and China that was coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, the then Chief Economist of Goldman Sachs, to reflect the combined growing influence of these four countries in the contemporary global economic disposition as they are projected to attain absolute group dominance in the global economy …
Introduction While poverty is generally measured using a monetary basis, it is widely acknowledged that poverty is characterized by multiple dimensions beyond income poverty. This blog post compares the various multidimensional measures of poverty and finds that some of the gains in poverty eradication in the previous decades are likely lost due to the COVID-19 …
Introduction For decades, the mounting debt burdens of developing countries were often a “silent crisis” — a growing yet largely overlooked threat undermining economic stability and long-term development. Today, this silence has been shattered. The escalating costs of debt servicing, coupled with shrinking fiscal space and limited access to affordable financing, are pushing many nations …
Riba, or usury, has existed for millennia and will likely persist for many more. Does that make it “sustainable”? Is the persistence of a certain behavior or phenomenon sufficient to consider it sustainable? Mere persistence cannot imply sustainability. Poverty, disease, and wars persist throughout history. But that does not make them sustainable. There must be …
