As the global hunt for critical minerals intensifies, few countries are better placed to profit than Indonesia. Sitting atop vast reserves of nickel, bauxite, and copper, the archipelago now accounts for nearly a quarter of the world’s mineral output—resources essential to the clean-energy revolution. While Western economies scramble to reduce their strategic reliance on China and Russia for critical minerals, Jakarta has seized the moment with uncharacteristic confidence. A mix of export bans, domestic-processing requirements, and investment incentives is luring billions in foreign capital from firms eager to secure stable supply chains. The government hopes to turn this mineral wealth into the foundation of an industrial economy, moving from ore-dependent to manufacturing powerhouse in a single leap. The challenges are formidable—patchy infrastructure, regulatory uncertainty, environmental strains—but so is the prize. If Indonesia can sustain reform and investment, it will become not just a supplier of the world’s green economy but one of its chief beneficiaries. As the chief provider of several critical minerals, Indonesia is well set to replace other commodity exporters, but by preventing unprocessed commodities from being exported they also have the potential to replace China as the chief supplier of refined minerals in a time where tensions remain high.

Indonesia plans to better benefit from its natural resources by undertaking a process known as downstreaming. The core concept is that by instituting an export ban of unprocessed raw commodities a country can force investors and other states to spend on processing and manufacturing within the country. This means that certain minerals within Indonesia which are in high demand will not be exported raw but rather must be processed and refined within its own borders and perhaps even go higher up the supply chain, directly into manufacturing. While traditionally downstreaming has been a problematic step for many aspiring countries as their customers have sought different suppliers to protect their own workers and industries, Indonesia does not face these issues. Due to Indonesia’s massive mineral output, particularly in certain minerals such as nickel that are so heavily concentrated in Indonesia in terms of quantity and quality, finding any meaningful competing supplier will prove to be difficult for most countries. As for protectionist policies, since much of the developed world had already offshored mineral processing to China the number of workers or industries that would be harmed by purchasing cheap refined metals from Indonesia would be minor. As a result, many of the problems which Indonesia has faced in the past to further industrialize their mineral sector are either gone or have become primarily irrelevant.

The core of Indonesia’s mineral potential rests on three primary factors. The first of these is the demographic advantages that Indonesia possesses; it is a young middle income country with the fourth largest population in the world, making it well suited for certain sectors such as mineral processing. The second factor is the massive amounts of natural resources which the country sits upon, specifically with industrially crucial minerals such as nickel, bauxite, cobalt, and copper. Indonesia is the seventh largest producer of copper, second largest of bauxite, and possesses as much as half of all nickel production in the world, making it a very productive and attractive location for the mining industry. The third factor which cannot be ignored is the increasingly fraught relations between many developed countries with among the most crucial countries in the world for mining and mineral processing, Russia and China. Russia, which is the second largest producer of nickel, and China, which is a major producer of bauxite and other minerals but more crucially was the center for global mineral processing, are both facing increasing pressures domestically and internationally as alternatives are being sought for the economic roles which they have been so important to in the past. In these circumstances Indonesia plays a potentially great role in which they hope to fill both shoes. This is why both the Biden and Trump administrations have sought trade deals with Indonesia to secure supply chains for these minerals. By using its demographic advantages and chokehold on the mineral supply Indonesia can set terms to external actors, forcing them to move increasingly larger elements of their business to Indonesia.

Indonesia has long sought to better take advantage of its mineral production by not only exporting the raw commodity. Despite making approximately 12% of the country’s economy and having taken many steps to drive up the value chain, Indonesia has had many bumps along the way. An export ban in 2014 failed to deliver its promised results as countries looked towards other locations to expand their sources of minerals. Additionally, Indonesia remains reliant on China as its main customer for minerals while also relying on Chinese made processing machinery if they are to downstream. However, it should be noted that since then, tensions between much of the democratic world and China have dramatically risen, leading to a desperation to find new secure sources of minerals. This is further aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions that fell upon it. During the earlier export ban Russia was still a major exporter of these critical minerals being the second largest producer of nickel, but due to the sanctions and conflict that Russia situated itself it has been mostly driven out of some of these sectors. Indonesia could reconsider its earlier attempts at downstreaming.

Other issues that potentially could have curtailed Indonesia in the past, such as expansive infrastructure and a ready market, have also been for the most part either resolved or in the process of being so. One of the most debilitating problems for Indonesia has been that the majority of this mineral wealth has been found in locations such as Sulawesi and Borneo. These northern islands are far more sparsely populated than the Indonesian heartland based on Java and other southern islands, making them historically underdeveloped and their resources less tapped into. However, Indonesia has long sought to improve its grip on its sprawling state and more recently find a new location for a new capital for the country. The new location chosen to replace the old capital, Jakarta, has turned out to be in eastern Borneo, deliberately chosen for its proximity to mineral deposits on that island and nearby Sulawesi, providing a massive boost for capital and infrastructure. Despite the project facing hurdles, especially with its biggest supporter former President Jokowi stepping down from his previous role, billions have already been spent to build and expand the infrastructure in the region, easing the way for mining and processing development. The other hurdle of a ready market is even more easily resolved. Resource demands for the green transition have been mostly focused on rare earths in the media, and while this is something that Indonesia has in abundance as well, other more traditional materials such as copper and nickel are going to be needed in far greater quantities for the green transition. Copper is already expected to rise by 40% in demand while nickel demand will rise by 60-70%, although this can be even larger. With Indonesia’s dominance in critical minerals such as nickel, anyone who wishes to enact the green transition or even modernize their already existing energy infrastructure will have to take Indonesia’s down-streaming concerns seriously. This also includes Indonesia, which is already seeking to compete against China in production of batteries and other value-added industries that are dependent on Indonesian minerals with the help of investment from South Korea and other countries. Thus, a growing domestic and international market is essentially guaranteed as demand ramps up, and Indonesia has the added potential of being the lowest cost supplier for many elements within the green transition.

Indonesia’s mineral boom may prove to be either the foundation of a new industrial era or another chapter in the long saga of resource-fueled ambition. The government’s bid to leap from ore to industry reflects both newfound confidence and hard economic logic: in a world racing toward electrification, those who control the metals control the means of progress. Yet success will hinge on Jakarta’s ability to balance its domestic infrastructure and policy with global integration, and to turn infrastructure and governance from bottlenecks into enablers. The world’s factories are hungry, and Indonesia’s mines are rich, but whether the archipelago becomes a cornerstone of the green economy or merely its quarry will depend on how deftly it manages the next decade.

Ron Chalamish is a senior at Columbia University, where he majors in History. An international student, he brings a global perspective to his academic work and campus involvement. He serves as Co-President of the Alexander Hamilton Society at Columbia, helping lead discussions on foreign policy and international affairs.

In 2024, health-technology investment in Latin America rose by 37.6 percent, reaching 253.7 million USD. In the decade leading up to that same year, more than 1,200 health-innovation companies were founded in the region. Taken together, these trends reveal Latin America’s growing participation in the global shift toward digitalized access to care.

Nowhere has this momentum been more visible than in Brazil. Over the past decade, the country has become home to more than 600 new healthtech startups and has attracted about 1.6 billion USD in funding. Nearly two-thirds of all digital health companies in Latin America now operate in Brazil, which also captured four of the region’s five largest healthtech funding rounds in 2024. These investments have fueled companies creating digital tools that touch every stage of clinical delivery, from patient intake to post-visit follow-up. Their effects are already visible in platforms such as Amigo, Mevo, and Beep Saúde, which are using AI-guided triage to reduce clinic waiting times, automate prescription workflows, and send licensed nurses directly to patients’ homes for vaccinations, diagnostics, and routine services. Together, these three startups alone accounted for more than a quarter of all health-tech capital in Latin America last year.

However, behind the success of these high-profile startups is a structural divide. Brazil’s digital transformation is advancing fastest in the part of the health system used by the smallest share of its population. The country spends between 9 and 10 percent of its GDP on healthcare, which translates into roughly 135 billion USD. According to OECD data, about 60 percent of total health spending goes to the private sector, even though only about 50 million Brazilians, or roughly 25 percent of the population, have private coverage. Despite serving a minority, this sector controls 63 percent of all hospitals in the country. These well-funded, mostly urban networks already operate with stable broadband, integrated electronic health records, and dedicated innovation teams, which allow them to adopt new technologies quickly and with measurable results. Studies of telemedicine and remote-monitoring programs in large private hospitals, including Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein and Hospital Sírio-Libanês, have shown reductions in waiting times, higher patient satisfaction, and improved continuity of care. Their capacity to implement new technologies shows the potential of digital health when infrastructure, staffing, and funding align.

For most Brazilians, however, accessing healthcare looks entirely different. About 164 million people, or about 72 percent of the entire population, rely exclusively on the public system, Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS). Although SUS provides more than 2.8 billion services each year, its ability to adopt digital tools is constrained by major infrastructure deficits. Nearly 40 percent of primary-care units lack stable broadband access, and many facilities still rely on paper records or WhatsApp because national information systems do not function reliably in low-bandwidth or offline environments. Brazil’s National Digital Health Strategy identifies this divide as a “new social determinant of health” and calls for expanded broadband, unified electronic records, and digital-literacy training. Yet recent evaluations from the OECD show that many SUS clinics still lack the basic conditions needed for digital transformation, including interoperable records, adequate hardware, and trained personnel. As a result, technologies that scale quickly in private hospitals remain largely out of reach for the public system that most Brazilians depend on.

These infrastructure gaps, combined with the rapid expansion of private funding, have pushed state governments to explore alternative ways to modernize the public system, most notably through large public–private partnerships. For 2025 alone, Brazilian states announced about 2.4 billion USD in new health infrastructure PPP projects. These include a hospital expansion in Mato Grosso do Sul, a 30-year health complex in Minas Gerais, costing about 1 billion USD, and new administrative facilities in São Paulo. However, independent assessments from organizations such as the Federal Court of Accounts show that most PPP contracts focus on construction, equipment, and non-clinical services, while core digital components such as interoperable information systems, cybersecurity, and digital-skills training are often excluded. As a result, new buildings may open with upgraded physical infrastructure but still face the same digital limitations that prevent many SUS clinics from adopting modern tools.

Improving physical structures alone cannot guarantee that new technologies actually enter hospitals. That depends on how Brazil evaluates and approves them. Since 2011, the country has had a national system for health technology assessment (HTA), but the hospital-level process, known as hospital-based HTA, remains weak and inconsistent across the public sector. A major consensus study found that HB-HTA units are rare, underfunded, and poorly integrated into hospital management. As a result, private hospitals with specialized evaluation teams can systematically assess and adopt digital tools, while many public facilities, lacking technical staff and reliable data systems, often rely on clinician requests, vendor pressure, or court rulings. In practice, this means such technology follows institutional capacity rather than population need.

Without a doubt, Brazil has the capital, talent, and startup momentum to shape the future of digital health in Latin America, and federal leaders have proved that vision by placing digital transformation on the 2025 BRICS agenda. However, aspiration alone cannot ensure that someone seeking care at a public clinic in Belém or Maceió will experience the same digital support that patients already find in private networks in Rio de Janeiro. Closing that gap will require sustained public investment in broadband, interoperable records, and a workforce capable of using new technologies, as well as coordination across the country’s more than 5,000municipalities. Without these structural commitments, innovation will continue to take root where resources already exist, and Brazil risks building one of the region’s most advanced digital health ecosystems that remains inaccessible to most of its citizens.

Iva Jovanova (CC ’28) is a writer for the Emerging Markets Review studying computer science. Having worked in digital health research, she’s interested in the intersection of technology and well-being, with a focus on how innovation and digital infrastructure evolve in emerging markets.

Reassessing China+1: Tariff Risk Versus Wage Arbitrage in Global Furniture Manufacturing

Introduction

For much of the last three decades, China has risen to be a dominant player in global manufacturing, particularly within the furniture and interior design industries. Accordingly, most international retailers and brands have come to source entire collections from manufacturers throughout China. Lately, however, rising wages and land costs in coastal China, a wave of increasingly volatile U.S.–China tariffs, and broader geopolitical tensions have made the old “all-in-China” approach look riskier than it once did. In response, sourcing teams have increasingly adopted what is now termed a China+1 strategy, maintaining a substantial manufacturing presence in China while deliberately adding at least one alternative production base to insulate against cost shocks and policy volatility. China+1 is therefore best understood as a risk-management hedge against geopolitical, tariff, and supply-chain shocks, rather than against traditional wage-arbitrage.

What “China+1” Means in Furniture

China’s furniture industry sits at the center of a dense global ecosystem that links industrial clusters in places like the Pearl River Delta and Nankang (Jiangxi) to big-box retailers and e-commerce platforms in the U.S. and Europe. On the supply side, China accounts for roughly one-third of worldwide furniture production, with output near USD 160 billion in 2023. On the demand side, the U.S. is still one of the largest importers in the world, sourcing more than USD 25 billion in furniture annually, with China and Vietnam as its top suppliers. In recent years, China provides roughly 23–29% of U.S. furniture imports, down from more than 50 percent in 2017. This combination of a highly integrated Chinese production base and an increasingly diversified U.S. import market defines the constraints faced by Chinese exporters and serves as a backdrop to the China+1 conversation..

Wage Arbitrage Vs. Tariff Policy

Discussions of China+1 commonly rely upon a straightforward cost narrative: as wages in China rise, production naturally migrates to cheaper labor markets like Vietnam, India, or Indonesia. Chinese wages have climbed drastically in the past two decades, with 2023 average urban monthly of 11,300 Chinese Yuan (roughly 1,600 USD), while Vietnam’s average monthly income was around VND 7.1 million (roughly 290 USD). Manufacturing-specific data tell a similar story, where average annual wages in China’s manufacturing sector reached about 14,500 USD in 2023, while average annual manufacturing wages in Vietnam were about 3,800 USD in early 2024. On the demand side, in 2023 the U.S. imported roughly USD 27 billion of other furniture and related component parts per year, with Vietnam supplying roughly 25% (USD 6.81 billion) and China about 23% (USD 6.4 billion) of that total. Looking solely at these wage gaps and the shifting balance/distribution between Vietnam and China in U.S. furniture sourcing, the idea that “business simply followed the cheapest labor” seems very plausible.

The timeline of the China+1 rollout, however, points to tariff and policy shocks as the main driver rather than wages alone. Before the recent tariff waves, China dominated U.S. furniture imports, in fact by 2017, Chinese suppliers accounted for roughly 60% of total U.S. household furniture imports, while Vietnam’s share was only about 13%. The wage gap between China and lower-cost Asian competitors had been widening for years, yet U.S. buyers stayed heavily concentrated in China until the Section 301 tariffs hit in 2018–19. These measures imposed punitive duties of up to 25% on more than USD 300 billion of imports from China, and many wooden and metal furniture products now carry an additional 25% ad valorem Section 301 duty. For example, Chinese wooden bedframes classified under 9403.50.9045 HTSUS (Harmonized Tariff Schedule of United States) are explicitly subject to a 25% surcharge in addition to broadband China tariffs. After these duties came into force, China’s share of the U.S. furniture imports fell while Vietnam’s rose, and by the mid‑2020s Vietnam had become the single largest supplier. In Lecong, the “Furniture Kingdom” of China, vendors reported that they have long since given up on the U.S. market and rebuilt their order books in India, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia in response to tariff pressure. Taken together, this abrupt inflection after tariff rounds provides strong evidence that policy shocks, not wage trends, were the primary driver of the restructuring of U.S. furniture import sourcing.

China’s Response to China+1

China’s response to this China+1, tariff-heavy environment has not been to exit furniture manufacturing but to retool so that it remains the most resilient node in the network. China is still the world’s largest exporter of other furniture (bedding, lamps, prefab buildings etc.), shipping about USD 27.1 billion in 2023, with the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan among its top destinations. To offset higher wages and policy risk, Chinese factories have invested heavily in automation. Chinese plants are installing roughly 280,000 industrial robots a year, about half of all new robots worldwide, helping them retain or even increase their share in labor-intensive export sectors like toys and furniture between 2019 and 2023. Production has also migrated into highly automated inland clusters such as Nankang in Jiangxi, where one highlighted bed factory reportedly produces up to 30,000 units a month with about 30 workers on intelligent manufacturing lines.

Conclusion

Taken together, this evidence suggests that wage gaps create the background conditions for China+1, but tariff and policy risk have been the decisive shock that forced sourcing teams to diversify, and that reshaped how Chinese manufacturers operate. Wages between China and Vietnam had been diverging for years, yet U.S. furniture sourcing remained heavily China‑centric until Section 301 tariffs and later rounds of duties raised the landed cost of Chinese furniture by as much as 25% overnight. Once those policy shocks arrived, buyers moved quickly, and Chinese producers responded not by abandoning the sector but by automating, shifting inland, tightening logistics links, and investing in digital traceability so they could remain indispensable even in a diversified, risk‑managed sourcing model. In that sense, China+1 in furniture is less a simple race to the lowest wage and more a risk‑management framework. Buyers keep alternative origins to hedge against tariff and policy surprises, while China’s upgraded clusters aim to stay the dominant manufacturing hub in the system.

Ardalan Tayebi is a senior undergraduate architecture student at Columbia University interested in the intersection of real estate, hospitality, and manufacturing. He researches how emerging markets, supply chains, and furniture production shape the built environment, and enjoys designing furniture and experimenting with emerging AI tools for conceptualizing 3D space. In his free time, he plays soccer and piano, listens to classical music, and likes to keep up with hospitality and real-estate news around the world.

Traditionally, tariffs were the domain of policymakers, economists, and multinational CEOs; in today’s consumer economy, however, the boundary between macro and micro has collapsed, making tariffs a concern for all business owners. In the United States, a country synonymous with consumer choice and entrepreneurial hustle, this new reality is particularly stark. A policy decision made in Washington or Beijing can ripple through a startup’s cost structure within weeks, rewarding startups with capital and supply-chain flexibility while squeezing out those without it. As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce observes, even a small tariff increase can have a “profound effect” on a small importer’s bottom line. This dynamic rewrites what it means to build a consumer brand in America, as founders now compete not just on product or creativity, but on their ability to navigate geopolitics. The result is a consumer landscape where trade policy, not just market demand, helps decide which brands scale and which never get their chance.

In recent years, the United States and China have entered a prolonged trade standoff, with policies like the Section 301 tariffs quietly restructuring the economics of American consumer innovation. The Section 301 tariffs, enacted in waves since 2018, imposed duties of 10–25% on billions of dollars of Chinese imports, including many consumer goods. These measures targeted sectors deeply reliant on Chinese manufacturing, ultimately affecting roughly one-third of all U.S. imports. As a result, many startups saw their costs jump virtually overnight, leading small business owners to consider increasing their prices by the tariff rate or delaying business expansion.

In this tariff environment, access to capital became not just a growth advantage, but a matter of survival. Tariffs operate unevenly across the consumer landscape because they expose operational vulnerabilities that only capital can solve. A 2025 poll showed 60% of American small businesses faced higher input costs from tariffs, typically in the 10–25% range. Lacking any cushion to absorb or pass on these costs, small brands were often forced to cut marketing, reduce product variety, delay launches, or pivot to less optimal domestic suppliers. These kinds of shocks proved existential for some companies: a number of unfunded ventures saw their margins evaporate and ultimately exited the market. Venture-backed brands, on the other hand, could invest in workarounds, reshoring production, bulking up inventory to hedge against delays or dual-sourcing materials. The result is a form of economic sorting in which trade policy amplifies the structural divide between funded and unfunded startups.

In the modern tariff landscape, venture capitalists have started incorporating supply-chain resilience into their due diligence checklists. Venture firms even began talking about a “decoupling premium,” essentially rewarding startups that can manufacture locally or diversify sourcing away from China. One 2025 analysis noted that venture capital firms were utilizing the trade-war period as a “stress test” for founders, revealing which teams are resilient and resourceful enough to turn macro headwinds into opportunity. This represents a subtle but significant shift in how innovation is funded: a founder’s ability to anticipate and mitigate tariff risk has become a core determinant of valuation and investor confidence. As a result, capital is concentrating in fewer, larger companies that can manage compliance and logistics risk.

This change in investor mindset had immediate effects on the startup landscape. Larger venture-backed consumer companies managed to mitigate tariff exposure by shifting parts of their manufacturing to North America, investing in automation or redesigning products to avoid heavily taxed components. More specifically, a recent industry survey underscored that nearly a quarter of U.S. consumer goods executives reported that tariffs drove them to shift sourcing or manufacturing locations. Shifting production requires upfront capital and scale economies that smaller companies lack, widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. Accordingly, smaller indie competitors or early-stage Amazon-native brands often had no such options. Many had to raise prices or eat the added costs, therefore sacrificing profits and growth to survive.

Tariffs now operate as a gatekeeper of innovation, shaping not only trade and consumer prices but also which startups are able to scale. In the American context, this dynamic is especially pronounced, as the U.S. market relies heavily on imported goods. Higher manufacturing costs and supply chain disruptions favor venture-backed companies with the resources to absorb shocks, while smaller, bootstrapped startups are locked out of scaling. When the cost of entering the market spikes, fewer startups attempt market entry, reducing consumer choice and slowing innovation.

Raymond Ashkenazie (GS ’29) is a writer for the Columbia Emerging Markets Review studying Financial Economics and Political Science. His focus centers on financial analysis and the intersection of markets, innovation, and policy.

The South African Power Pool is an inter-governmental collection of Southern African countries, created in 1995, designed to coordinate the planning and operation of member-nations’ electric systems. SAPP facilitates cross-border electricity exchange and infrastructure development, and has been particularly advantageous for its less developed members, supporting energy security and trading reliability, amongst other benefits. Among the members of the SAPP, lie two strategic trading partners: Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Although the two countries are well-integrated, Mozambique’s faster modernization and diversification increasingly strain the partnership, where Zimbabwe––which relies heavily on Mozambican electricity imports––ultimately stands to be the biggest loser..

Through its state-owned power company, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), Zimbabwe is deeply dependent on Mozambique for energy imports. In 2024, Zimbabwe imported 39% of its electricity from Mozambique through various energy plants and dams. Yet, Zimbabwe has been incredibly inconsistent in making payments to Mozambique. Over the years, Mozambique’s State Energy Company, Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM), and the Hydroelectrica Cahora Bassa (HCB), of which the Mozambique government holds a majority stake, have made numerous warnings in response to Zimbabwe’s accumulation of debt in relation to payments. In 2009, Reuters reported that the EDM and the Hydroelectrica Cahora Bassa, threatened to cut or reduce electrical exports to Zimbabwe over its debts of $5.3 million to EDM and $40.3 million to HCB. In 2017, Reuters reported that Zimbabwe’s grid experienced power cuts, with regional suppliers noting Zimbabwe’s outstanding debt as the cause of these cuts. In total, Zimbabwe is reported to owe $102.9 million to regional power suppliers as of June 2023. The country noted in its 2022 Annual Debt Bulletin $18.73 million in debt to EDM, and $74.92 million to HCB, highlighting a deeply troubling and recurring pattern. Zimbabwe’s deep dependence on Mozambique, persistent debt and continued payment failures strain their partnership––leaving Zimbabwe particularly vulnerable.

Mozambique has established itself as an influential player within the South African Power Pool (SAPP), continuing to progress and improve its domestic production capacity. As a net exporter of energy, Mozambique supplies other countries with electricity such as South Africa, which receives 65% of the energy generated from the Hydroelectrica Cahora Bassa. Furthermore, unlike many of its neighbors, Mozambique has prioritized hydropower over coal. Recently, the Government of Mozambique (GoM), in partnership with the World Bank Group, signed onto a National Energy Compact in 2024—an ambitious plan that focuses on regional integration of its electric grid, providing universal access to electricity for Mozambicans, and increasing private sector investment, with a predicted completion date of 2030. As of 2025, Mozambique has begun construction on the Mphanda Nkuwa Dam—valued at $5 billion—and a 400kv Transmission Backbone for domestic grid integration, closing the gap between planning and completion. With these improvements, Mozambique stands to become a more strategically leveraged partner.

Zimbabwe’s volatility in its payments to Mozambique, however, places it in a precarious position. Mozambique’s projects are backed predominantly by private investors. The World Bank, for example, which has signed on to finance the Mphanda Nkuwa hydropower project—places these projects under certain restrictions through Power Purchase Agreements (PPA). In relation to these large energy infrastructure projects, the World Bank requires a central contract between a “bankable offtaker”––a buyer with a strong credit rating––and the power company. These agreements guarantee long-term revenue, and in turn, secure the World Bank’s return on investment. Under these conditions, Mozambique may not renew its partnership with Zimbabwe. Still importing 39% of its energy from Mozambique, Zimbabwe is at risk of being sidelined, making it more susceptible to greater debt and energy instability without a stable trading partner.

Zimbabwe has seemingly tried to address this vulnerability—yet its efforts have been ineffective. In response to Mozambique, Zimbabwe signed onto their own Energy Compact with the World Bank Group. However, the compact’s ambiguous language and lack of detailed courses of action, guaranteed credit lines, and projects attracting foreign investors, marks a stark difference in comparison to Mozambique’s compact. With little documentation of expansive development of its electric grid, the Zimbabwean government instead highlights mini-grid installations and solar panels. Most of these small-scale projects are financed by local banks, or through government resources. Additionally, the compact highlights that the other planned projects have not reached financial closure. With these non-concrete agreements, Zimbabwe’s projects have little available capital in order to be fully funded—pushing Zimbabwe’s expansive aspirations away from the attainable and towards wishful planning.

As Mozambique continues to develop within the energy sector––through large hydropower investments, transmission upgrades, or strengthened regional integration––Zimbabwe has struggled to keep pace, hampered by accumulated debt, inconsistent planning, and systemic fiscal challenges. With Zimbabwe’s future in relation to energy essentially up in the air, the country has the distinct potential to become “The Biggest Loser” within Southern Africa’s energy market.

Mansour Dieng (CC ‘29) is a writer for the Columbia Emerging Markets Review studying Economics and Political Science on a Pre-law track. As a writer, he aims to explore the Sub-Saharan Africa region, more specifically countries within Western Africa. He hopes to explore intercontinent relations amongst African countries and deeper evaluate the intersection between international relations and the worldly economy, especially within emerging markets and their political and economic transformations.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a political and economic organisation of 11 Southeast Asian nations—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Timor-Leste—which aims to promote intra-regional exchange as well as regional stability. Thailand, as a founding member, was promised security and a pathway out of poverty. However, this article asserts that while ASEAN initially delivered trade benefits and development opportunities to Thailand, ASEAN also eroded trade advantages and amplified structural weaknesses for the Thai state.

Since its establishment in 1967, many have celebrated ASEAN as a cornerstone of regional solidarity, with Singapore, a member country, going as far as to say ASEAN is “the most successful regional organisation in Asia.” In many ways, that characterisation holds ground: ASEAN’s trade with China has risen approximately 15% in the last financial year despite having a 258.7 billion dollar trade balance with Europe, and the region boasts a growth of 4.6%, more than double the US’s and triple the EU’s. In a multipolar world, the ASEAN region is especially important to both the U.S. and China; overtures to ASEAN countries by these superpowers are made with shocking frequency. Despite poverty in some areas, Southeast Asia is one of the richest regions in the world, with a rapidly growing middle class that represents a potentially significant consumer market, one which is increasingly more digitally literate and entrepreneurial.

Thailand’s agricultural strength places it apart from the rest of the ASEAN countries, but it is not clear whether ASEAN membership has truly benefitted the Thai economy. Thailand is known as the kitchen of the world, but its export industry is also supported by other materials and produced goods, such as rubber and automotives. ASEAN integration helped to expand Thai export markets, specifically the automotive industry, but it must be mentioned that Thailand already had robust agricultural and rubber industries prior to ASEAN. Its membership did not allow Thailand to develop new industries so much as it provided more of a market to sell Thai materials and goods. When the ASEAN Free Trade Association (AFTA) was created, Thailand experienced an export-driven economic boom. However, even as Thailand was experiencing more economic growth, structural and logistical difficulties persisted. Many illegal workers from other ASEAN countries were exploited, alongside children and urban workforces, in order to meet demand. Since the Thai baht was pegged to the U.S. dollar—the dollar appreciated in the 90s—Thai exports became less competitive. By the end of the decade, Thailand experienced an economic crisis, in part due to unsustainable FDI and asset bubbles that spread out of the whole region. During the 2008 financial crisis, Thailand became the most affected ASEAN country due to its dependence on global exports. The economic downturns that ensued exposed Thailand’s relatively disproportionate sensitivity to global shocks. Furthermore, it reminded the world that Thailand’s membership in the ASEAN may have helped expand export bases, but it has also deepened economic inequality and national dependency.

Being an ASEAN member has not alleviated Thai internal security issues and Thailand’s numerous border disputes have sowed precipitous distrust amongst its allies. Whilst ASEAN was founded to counter communist influence and create regional stability, communist insurgencies continued region-wide post-ASEAN. One of the central aims of ASEAN was also to refute Chinese influence but Thailand specifically was among the first ASEAN countries to normalise diplomatic relations with China, reflecting the common motif of Thailand breaking with ASEAN policy. In the 1970s, domestic turmoil in Thailand, such as the toppling of the military regime, came to pass whilst Thailand was a member of ASEAN. In 1991, the civilian government was overthrown by a military officer who had previously orchestrated a coup, leading to brutal crackdowns and widespread violence, until 1997 when the new Thai constitution was written. In the late 2000s, Cambodia and Thailand, two ASEAN members, engaged in a series of border skirmishes that claimed dozens of lives and displaced thousands, with many countries in the ASEAN community viewing Thailand as a suspect member. Domestic political fighting and protests have undermined Thailand’s status as an ASEAN member, sometimes very visibly such as when an ASEAN summit in Thailand was disrupted by protestors. Conversely, it also seems to be the case that Thailand’s membership in the ASEAN has not protected Thailand from internal or external security threats.

Structurally, as labour costs and regional regulations increase in Thailand, Vietnam seems poised to overtake Thailand’s traditional industries. The fact both countries are members of ASEAN may benefit a country like Vietnam which has a lot to gain but places Thailand, a country with a lot to lose, in the firing line. ASEAN membership has not been able to mitigate threats Thailand sees which are based in its geography, history, and institutional weaknesses. Early ASEAN membership did not address Thailand’s structural problems and, if anything, the 1990s boom period for Thailand only served to more openly display such weaknesses. Thailand’s developmental model was based on FDI inflows rather than internal reform, because such internal reform was not demanded by the ASEAN; poorer ASEAN countries were happy to make use of the labour opportunities present in Thailand. In Thailand, the rural underdevelopment persisted through the 2000s as did the persistence of coups, many of which brought with them brutal crackdowns and great injustices dealt to the Thai people. In all these cases, membership in ASEAN either transformed Thailand’s structural incompetency into imminent threats or failed to address pertinent changes that could have potentially led to Thailand averting major damage in its economic bust cycles and in periods of unrest.

Overall, ASEAN has offered Thailand tangible opportunities for expansion and decision-making on the regional scale, but those benefits have not helped to correct Thailand’s deeper economic and political instability. Thailand’s structural weaknesses, whether due to export dependency or political volatility, have shaped its trajectory far more than ASEAN membership has. Even if ASEAN membership has facilitated periods of growth for Thailand, it has not insulated it from crisis and, as a result, ASEAN’s value to Thailand remains ambiguous, uneven, and limited.

Jawad Asaria is a Junior in the Dual BA Program between Columbia University and Sciences Po. He is pursuing a Financial Economics Major and hopes to contribute positively to the economic empowerment of the Global South. Asaria is passionate about entrepreneurship in Africa and follows it with great attention. In his spare time, he likes to watch films and is trying (in vain, some might argue) to learn golf.

The ramifications of the Russo-Ukranian war extend well beyond the battlefield, bringing turmoil in the Greek territory: gasoline prices spiked, revealing a strong energy dependence on Russia’s oil structures. During and after Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, Greece didn’t sufficiently develop internal energy sources, but rather focused on establishing energy import agreements with other countries, furthering Greece’s dependence on external powers and leaving the country vulnerable in the case of future energy crises.

March 15, 2022, marked a significant date for the European Union energy sector; the EU prohibited purchases of Russian gasoline, diesel fuel, and other refined petroleum products. On the same day, the EU banned the supply of energy-related equipment, technology and related services to Russia, in addition to banning new investments in the Russian energy sector. As a direct result of these new laws, Russia’s share of EU gas imports dropped from over 40% in 2021 to only 11% in 2024. These new bans gave way to an energy crisis, as Russia was the primary gas supplier for a majority of EU countries including Germany, Italy, and Greece, to name just a few.

In direct consequence to this energy crisis, Greece’s energy prices skyrocketed. For example, in 2024, the retail price of diesel in Greece was $1.79 per liter, making it the ninth most expensive in the EU. Similarly, electricity prices increased 35% in Athens from January 2021 to January 2025, while many other European countries saw a decrease in prices. In response to these rapidly rising prices, Greece sought alternative external energy sources.

Greece’s natural gas supply has traditionally relied on three main sources: the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which delivers gas primarily from Azerbaijan; the TurkStream pipeline, which transports Russian gas to Greece; and the Revithoussa liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, which receives LNG from the United States, Algeria, and Russia. Following Ukraine’s invasion in 2022, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed his support for the TAP pipelines expansion during the COP29 climate conference in Baku. Additionally, in August 2022, a new floating storage unit at the LNG terminal in Revithoussa, owned by the Greek company DEFSA, started operations. Accordingly, in September 2022, Greece’s largest utility, DEPA Commercial, clinched a deal with the French company TotalEnergies for the supply of LNG in an effort to reduce its reliance on Russian gas. Thanks to the new storage unit, LNG cargoes doubled not only for TotalEnergies, but for Greece as a whole. Greece now sources more than 80% of its LNG imports from the US, while gas imports from Russia have halved. Earlier this fall, in November 2025, Greece signed an agreement to import 700 million cubic meters of U.S. LNG per year starting in 2030, signaling the continuation of this US dependence.

Despite Greece’s efforts to diversify its gas resources, Greece has done little to develop its domestic gas supply. Regions surrounding Crete and the Ionean Sea hold a significant amount of recoverable natural gas reserves—15 billion barrels of oil, which is enough to fuel Greece for approximately a thousand years. Yet, instead of mobilizing these domestic reserves, Greece turned to external support, furthering its international dependence. This trajectory marks a clear missed opportunity for Greece, as the Russo-Ukraine induced energy crisis could have propelled Greece to harness its natural gas deposits rather than deepening its dependence on external powers. These natural gas deposits could transform Greece’s role: instead of relying on others for gas and being a transit corridor for energy resources, it could become an active-producing nation.

Moreover, Greece’s newfound turn to international LNG imports furthers its vulnerabilities from external market exposure. Greece might heed warning from the case of Pakistan, a country which historically imported large quantities of LNG from Qatar and Eni. Following Ukraine’s 2022 invasion, global LNG prices skyrocketed, with Europe buying up massive LNG cargoes to replace lost Russian pipelines. Notably, LNG agreements are destination flexible, meaning that the seller can redirect the cargoes if the market price makes it favorable. As a result, Pakistan could not compete with wealthier European nations and suddenly found itself out of the LNG market. The result was nationwide blackouts, industrial shutdowns, and severe inflation in electricity and transport costs. In the case of another global energy shock, Greece could find itself similarly squeezed out of the LNG market, a severe vulnerability that could be mitigated by developing domestic gas productions.

Had a Greek cultivation of domestic energy resources started years ago, Greece would not have experienced such an extreme energy crisis after the Ukrainian invasion. This should be a lesson for Greece, especially as the nation continues to deepen its foreign dependence on LNG imports. Thankfully, in November 2025, Exxon Mobil, Helleniq Energy, and Energean signed a deal for an experimental historic drilling campaign in the Ionian Sea starting in late 2026, signalling a new willingness in Greece to capitalize its natural resources. That said, this slow pace and experimental phase of the new drilling would not make a difference in the face of a new energy crisis. Therefore, I recommend that Greece fast track the expansion of domestic drilling industries to stimulate and protect the local economy from foreign influence.

Sofia Antoniadou (SEAS ’29) is a writer for the Columbia Emerging Markets Review studying Biomedical Engineering. She is interested in exploring the intersection between health and technology.

Economic trends are often described as science since they’re influenced by numbers, forecasts, and rational planning. However, is this designation really accurate? In reality, they’re shaped by human judgment, emotion, and politics. Having lived in Nicaragua my entire life, I’ve seen how these biases play out in real time where leaders often rely on instinct or political loyalty instead of evidence and analysis. That is the reason why policies tend to be reactive rather than strategic, where they are focused on short term gain instead of long term development. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman shows that we depend far more on intuition than on deliberate reasoning, while in Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that the fate of nations is shaped by the strength of their political institutions. Analyzing how bias shapes Nicaragua’s policy failures is crucial since the country’s weak institutional checks and crisis led by decision making makes bias not an occasional flaw but a structural force in governance.

Daniel Kahneman’s theory of System 1 and System 2 thinking explains certain Nicaraguan policymakers’ decisions. System 1 is fast, emotional, and instinctive, while System 2 is slow, analytical, and deliberate. Specifically, in Nicaragua’s political environment, where leaders face pressure to appear like they’re in control, System 1 seems to dominate. Instead of relying on data, decisions are often made from instinct and political calculation. So, when inflation rises or public unrest grows, leaders rush to “fix” problems with quick, visible actions like subsidies, new infrastructure projects, or short term wage hikes. For example, Nicaragua’s government temporarily froze fuel prices through subsidies in 2022 to reduce inflation pressures. Even if the actions may seem to calm the public, in reality, they often deepen fiscal deficits and inflation later in the long term. This reflects cognitive biases that Kahneman describes. One of them is the availability heuristic, which is when policymakers react to what’s most visible and not to what’s most important. If food prices suddenly rise, they impose price controls instead of addressing structural causes like poor productivity or logistics. Another is confirmation bias, which is when the government sticks to its preferred narrative, saying that foreign investment alone can lead to growth, but in reality, the country itself faces corruption and weak legal protections, keeping investors away. In the end, policymaking becomes performative. The truth is that leaders reward themselves for acting quickly, not necessarily wisely and people are built to tell stories and not interpret statistics. Therefore, in Nicaragua, policy is often shaped by the story leaders and those in power where they tell what they want even when the numbers suggest otherwise.

If cognitive bias explains how decisions go wrong, institutional bias explains why they stay that way. As Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue in Why Nations Fail, the difference between prosperity and stagnation depends on the kind of institutions a nation builds. Inclusive systems share power, encourage accountability, and reward innovation. Extractive systems focus their authority in the hands of a few who use it to protect their own interests. Nicaragua’s reality fits right in the latter category, where decision making is guided less by evidence than by loyalty. Economic programs that are meant to attract investors may work well for those close to those in power but not really for the broader population. In this sense, corruption is not only a moral failure, instead it’s institutionalized psychology. Officials justify favoritism as loyalty, and the system rewards compliance over competence, which leads to a cycle of policy short-termism where governments borrow heavily to fund public works before elections, manipulate the currency to show “growth,” or distribute subsidies that momentarily satisfy the public. Even if it looks politically convenient, these choices are led by Daniel Kahneman’s theory: System 1 thinking. Rational decisions like cutting spending or reforming institutions are politically risky. In Nicaragua, logic can be dangerous, while emotion becomes strategy.

The evidence is clear from the World Bank: slow growth, persistent inequality, an economy maintained by remittances (≈26.6 % of GDP in 2024), and a narrow set of commodities. This gives the illusion of stability but lacks real substance. On paper, Nicaragua looks steady but in reality, it’s paused in a permanent vulnerability. Cognitive bias explains much of this gap. Policymakers prioritize what is visible and immediate: like roads, short term construction spurts instead of long term investments in education, agriculture, or innovation. On the other hand, status quo bias discourages deep reform, where overconfidence ends up convincing leaders they can manage debt or inflation better than they actually can. The result is an economic mirage: cities expand and GDP rises momentarily upward, while rural poverty barely moves. This is where each stagnated project, each unmet promise quietly weakens public

trust and these patterns shape the rhythm of daily life. After elections, momentum fades, and half finished projects are forgotten, showing how policy is often used more as performance than strategy. Over time, this causes resignation, where citizens stop demanding accountability because they no longer believe it can exist.

The younger generation of Nicaraguans are starting to recognize bias not as personal failure but as a system of incentives and habits. They see that policymaking fails not because individuals are irrational but because the irrational behaviors are recognized by institutions. This understanding that is spreading through classrooms and civic spaces seems small but it’s very powerful as it transforms frustration into curiosity, turning it into the first spark of reform.

However, acknowledging bias is only the start because the real challenge is building institutions that can carry it. Behavioral economics shows that bias can’t be erased, but it can be limited by systems that slow decisions and force deliberation. For Nicaragua, this would mean establishing real safeguards, like forming independent oversight bodies with the authority to look at major policies, along with mandatory “cooling-off” periods for big spending or regulatory changes. These reforms wouldn’t eliminate bias, but they would make instinct driven decisions harder to push through unchecked.

Transparency is also very important. By simply releasing data on debt, spending, or growth, it does not guarantee that citizens will understand it correctly, especially in a context where information and statistics can be distorted or manipulated. Effective transparency requires a supporting ecosystem, with independent media capable of turning technical reports into accessible language, civil society groups trained in data analysis, and civic education programs that teach people to evaluate competing claims. Only when information is available and understandable, all at once, citizens, journalists, and researchers can act as a collective System 2, challenging political narratives rather than incorporating them.

Education is equally important. A population that understands how cognitive bias works is harder to convince with emotional populism. Teaching young voters to question, compare, and verify policy claims slowly shifts the national mindset from being reactive to reflective. And finally, true institutional resilience depends on inclusion. When policy decisions incorporate voices across class, gender, and region, competing biases collide and cancel out. Acemoglu and Robinson remind us that inclusive institutions encourage prosperity specifically because they turn reaction into deliberation and impulse into analysis.

Bias is an inseparable factor from human nature, but becomes dangerous when it governs a nation’s future. Nicaragua’s instability is not simply poor management but it’s the win of System 1 over System 2, of instinct over analysis.

To move forward, Nicaragua must learn to think slowly. Rationality takes effort and fairness requires structure. That is why, good governance isn’t about being bias free, but about being bias aware. Eventually, progress will show when leaders and citizens both learn to pause before they act, to question what feels right, and consider what is right. True development will not begin with slogans or sudden projects, but with a shared commitment to reflection and honesty. For Nicaragua, thinking slower may be the fastest way to grow.

Diana is a freshman at Columbia College and she is planning to major in Economics. She is from South Korea but lived her entire life in Managua, Nicaragua. Diana enjoys playing volleyball and writing in her free time, specifically about economics in the real world.

Image Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia

In the last decade, Vietnam has undergone a remarkable technological transformation, positioning itself as one of Asia’s emerging innovation hubs. Once ranked 59th in the Global Innovation Index; Vietnam is now ranked 44th, second among the 37 lower-middle-income economies. This upward trajectory reflects Vietnam’s expanding talent pool, startup ecosystem, and government support. According to Australia’s National Science Agency (CSIRO), 85% of the top 500 Vietnamese businesses have upgraded their technology, 81% have invested in research and development (R&D), with 41% focusing their R&D efforts on core technologies. Vietnam’s institutional reform prioritizes innovation, including key sectors such as semiconductor development, software, financial technology development, and artificial intelligence, which have ultimately allowed Vietnam to reshape its economic landscape.

The Vietnamese startup ecosystem is thriving, with six privately held startups valued at over $1 billion (unicorns) and 5,500 startups in 2025. A leading example, VNLife, is a technology unicorn, offering a compelling array of products that expand beyond a national scale. The company offers a broad range of multifunctional products ranging from banking enablement, digital payment systems, travel, and retail solutions. A pioneer in the digital payment sector, VNlife introduced national interoperable QR code payments, which have now successfully expanded to cross-border payments with countries such as China, Japan, and South Korea. VNlife’s payment platform offers a multifunctional product that integrates cybersecurity, AI, big data, and blockchain, enhancing operational efficiency. Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi have become the pillars for developing businesses, together attracting nearly $2.8 billion in capital flows, with VNLife contributing $0.5 billion alone.

One of the primary reasons that Vietnam is poised to expand and accelerate its technological innovation is the government’s development of initiatives and policies that promote creativity and protect intellectual property (IP). On August 13, 2025, Vietnam introduced a comprehensive amendment to its IP Law that serves as a protection mechanism for tech corporations. This amendment established a legal framework that will continue to push technological innovation in Vietnam by improving accessibility, encouraging business development, and enhancing the enforcement mechanisms of IP rights. Additionally, on July 1, 2025, Vietnam implemented the Law on the Organization of the People’s Courts, which includes provisions for the creation of two specialized IP courts: one in Ho Chi Minh City and one in Hanoi. These two cities are the primary hosts of centralized entrepreneurial startup ecosystems, making them ideal hubs for IP adjudication. This represents a significant advancement in stark contrast to the Vietnamese government’s previous IP enforcement. Under the earlier Intellectual Property Rights Infringement Prevention Cooperation Program, only 5 of the 776 IPR cases in 2023 were managed through judicial proceedings.

The advancement of STEM education and tech-centered fields is another catalyst driving innovation growth in Vietnam. The government is advancing STEM education through a higher education network incentivized through a performance-based funding approach. Universities demonstrating a robust STEM research and training program will receive priority in investment aligned with regional socio-economic development. Through this approach, Vietnam is compelling universities to contribute significantly to national innovation objectives. In 2024, Vietnam produced over 57,000 IT graduates, with more than 400 universities offering STEM-based programs. The government aims to expand enrollment to 1 million STEM students by 2030. This rapid growth in the talent pool is expected to foster greater competition and ingenuity in technology sectors, positioning Vietnam as a regional leader in technological development.

Through strategic initiatives aimed at promoting technological invention and education, the Vietnamese government has established a sustainable framework to drive the nation’s innovation momentum. Major objectives are underway that will put Vietnam’s long-term visions into action. In December 2024, Vietnam’s Politburo issued Resolution 57-NQ/TW, which identifies key priorities necessary to both advance Vietnam’s science and technology development and to leverage these achievements as catalysts for economic growth. The components of the resolution focus on strengthening Vietnam’s higher education system, attracting international talent, and elevating its position on the world stage. The resolution introduces a phased strategic timeline, spanning from transitioning into a science and technology-driven nation by 2030 to achieving global competitiveness by 2045. Strategic objectives for 2030 include earning a position among the top three nations in ASEAN for AI R&D, and ranking among the top 50 countries globally for e-government and digital economy. By 2045, Vietnam anticipates breakthrough innovation, with the emergence of at least five Vietnamese tech firms achieving regional and global influence.

Although Vietnam is making substantial headway in developing a tech ecosystem that fosters ingenuity, its current institutional framework underscores particular vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, the nation does not have the capacity to evolve fast enough to adapt, let alone dominate, in the technological market, given the speed at which technology evolves in modern day. This issue is largely enforced by low national investment in innovation, limited availability of high-skilled labor, and heavy dependence on foreign technology and infrastructure. Perhaps the most evident problem Vietnam faces is its dependence on assembly and end-stage processing within the technology supply chain. As of 2024, a staggering 24% of the national GDP is attributed to manufacturing. Looking at a regional neighbor, South Korea also has 24% of its GDP in manufacturing; however, the nation is a global powerhouse in advanced technology, with its economy anchored by a large, high‑skill service sector that champions industries such as electronics and automobiles. Vietnam’s economy is unusually dependent on manufacturing and is stuck in a low-value trap that prevents it from becoming globally competitive. South Korea’s success can be a testament to Vietnam’s potential.

Vietnam is currently facing the same lower-middle-income stagnation that South Korea managed to escape in the mid-2000s through aggressive R&D initiatives that pivoted the nation toward innovation-driven development. The state-coordinated R&D programs proved lucrative, pushing the nation’s R&D expenditure to a global peak of 5.2% of GDP in 2022 (second globally) and securing fourth place in the Global Innovation Index. Although Vietnam’s R&D investment was 0.4% in 2023, it is on a path similar to South Korea’s. The nation can position itself to break the manufacturing trap by fully translating its 2045 ambitions into tangible innovation capacity.

The ongoing challenges Vietnam faces– difficulty of regulatory adaptation to fast-evolving technologies, low national investment in innovation, limited availability of high-skilled labor, and heavy dependence on foreign technology and infrastructure– are precisely what Vietnam’s 2045 initiatives are working to resolve. To become a leading nation in technological development, Vietnam must first prioritize shifting its institutional frameworks and expanding its citizens’ capacity to prosper and drive the vision of world-class technology status. Vietnam is actively working to increase government investment, expand opportunities for skilled labor development, and attract FDI, and is making remarkable progress towards reaching its 2045 goals.

In achieving an education and innovation-friendly regulatory framework as the initial momentum for national development, Vietnam is ushering in a new era. Vietnam’s modernized frontier paves the way for potential technology specializations to arise, including ingenuity in smart climate and agriculture, as well as healthcare and medical technologies. The implementation of an adaptive innovation policy would mark a critical turning point in Vietnam’s international standing. Offering judicial stability will no doubt spur growth in foreign direct investment (FDI). In aggregate, Vietnam is clearly establishing a shift towards an economy based on intellectual capital, where innovation stands as the cornerstone of national advancement.

Sydney Finver (Barnard ’28) is an editor for the Columbia Emerging Markets Review studying Economics, Social History, and Political Science. She is passionate about understanding how domestic policy decisions influence broader economic and geopolitical dynamics. In her free time, she enjoys listening to British Invasion and 1970s rock music.

“The Kingdom is open for business,” reads Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. Simple, confident, and deliberate.

Over the past decade, Saudi Arabia has steadily rewritten its investment rulebook to draw global capital, culminating in a September announcement that the long-standing 49 percent cap on foreign ownership in listed companies may be lifted by year-end. On paper, this looks like a major liberalization moment—a signal that the world’s largest oil exporter is ready to let global investors take real stakes in its economy. In 2016, Mohammed bin Salman framed that ambition in grand terms, proclaiming that Saudi Arabia will become “an investment power on a global scale” and has been promising $6 trillion in investment opportunities over the next decade.

In most emerging markets, such announcements have signaled not just openness to capital, but openness to outside influence. When India liberalized in the 1990s, foreign investors reshaped automobiles, telecom, and consumer goods. When China brought in foreign manufacturers in the 1980s, it triggered decades of externally driven industrial transformation. Across Eastern Europe, the post-communist privatization waves saw foreign firms take majority stakes in banks, telecom companies, and energy networks, transforming how entire sectors were run.

Saudi Arabia is trying to achieve something different. Rooted in the logic of Vision 2030, the state knows an oil-dependent economy cannot sustain long-term growth and aims to build a more diversified and resilient base. To do that, it has identified a set of priority sectors it wants to accelerate: tourism and entertainment, logistics and transportation, renewable energy and hydrogen, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology and health, and financial and digital services. These industries require outside capital and expertise, yet the government is unwilling to give up strategic control of their development.

As a result, Saudi market access remains nationally steered. The Kingdom is opening its markets within what might be called a sandbox economy—a system that allows foreign money in, but only inside boundaries set by the state. This model gives investors predictability about where the state is steering the economy, but it also limits the bottom-up experimentation and competitive pressure that drive innovation in more open markets.

Symbolism and Substance

Lifting the 49 percent cap may signal openness, but it does not mean foreigners can buy Saudi companies outright. Under today’s rules from the Capital Market Authority (CMA), a single foreign investor can hold at most 10 percent of a listed company’s shares, and all foreign investors together are normally limited to 49 percent of the company. Policymakers have discussed removing this 49 percent ceiling and ending the old “Qualified Foreign Investor” program so that foreigners can trade directly on the Tadawul, Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange. Even if the overall cap is raised, the 10 percent per-investor limit and other safeguards (e.g. pre-approval requirements, disclosure thresholds, limits on board representation) would still allow the state to shape who can build a large stake.

These steps serve a clear purpose. Loosening ownership restrictions increases the pool of potential buyers, which raises trading activity and improves liquidity. It also allows Saudi stocks to qualify for a larger weight in global indices such as MSCI and FTSE Russell, encouraging index-tracking funds to buy more shares. Together, these effects help Riyadh deepen its domestic capital markets; however, they do not hand decision-making power to outsiders.

Foreign Strategic Investors: Influence, But on the State’s Terms

Despite the 10 percent single-entity ownership limit, foreign investors are not without channels for deeper participation. The clearest is the Foreign Strategic Investor (FSI) framework. Introduced in 2019, the framework reflects the reality that many of Saudi Arabia’s biggest listed companies are still tied to the state, whether through government stakes, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), or long-established family groups. Under the FSI rules, select foreign investors may exceed standard ownership caps, but only under tightly controlled conditions. Investors have to commit to long-term shareholding, demonstrate a clear role in improving operational or financial performance, and align their involvement with national economic goals as outlined in Vision 2030. These rules channel foreign investors to contribute technical knowledge and stability while the state retains strategic control.

Notably, the FSI framework didn’t open a new door so much as codify an already existing practice. A clear example is Allianz Saudi Fransi, a Saudi insurance company founded in 2007 as a joint venture between German insurer Allianz and the domestic Banque Saudi Fransi. Allianz held a 51 percent stake—a rare arrangement under today’s ownership caps—and entered the market as Saudi Arabia was overhauling its cooperative insurance framework and encouraging international expertise. The joint venture saw Allianz bring in new insurance products, updated underwriting practices, and improved risk-management systems. In 2024, it sold its majority stake to Abu Dhabi National Insurance Company (ADNIC), another state-supervised regional firm.

Petro Rabigh, a Saudi petrochemical company, followed the same logic. Created in 2005 as a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Japan’s Sumitomo Chemical, an industrial leader in petrochemicals, Sumitomo initially held a 37.5 percent stake in Petro Rabigh. Aramco sought a partner with advanced chemical-processing technology and global marketing reach as it moved downstream into higher-value production. As the project matured and Saudi capabilities deepened, Aramco gradually repurchased Sumitomo’s shares, reducing the Japanese firm’s ownership to roughly 15 percent. This followed the same pattern as Allianz: foreign partners are invited to provide expertise and scale, then gradually step back as Saudi and regional owners buy back shares. The gradual return to domestic control reflects a deliberate feature of the Kingdom’s economic management.

Greenfield vs Brownfield: Partnership as Permission

These cases show how foreign investors can take meaningful stakes in Saudi firms, but only within structures the state designs and supervises. A similar logic operates at the project level. Foreign investors have held large equity positions in Saudi companies, but almost exclusively when they helped found new ventures in collaboration with domestic institutions. This is the greenfield model, where projects are built from scratch with purpose-built ownership structures. Brownfield acquisition, meaning the purchase of an existing company, introduces outside ownership into firms that were not built with such arrangements in mind, and therefore, still remains tightly constrained.

This pattern shapes how different foreign partners approach Saudi Arabia. Chinese companies, in particular, have become major participants in greenfield ventures across clean energy, digital infrastructure and manufacturing/logistics. Greenfield ownership provides them with large equity positions, while the state retains strategic control.

At the center of this model stands the PIF, Vision 2030’s financial engine. The PIF anchors or co-develops most major greenfield initiatives, from industrial ventures to infrastructure and energy projects, and it manages the broader public-private partnership pipeline that channels foreign participation into state-defined priorities. Its influence stretches well beyond the projects it directly owns. Even ventures that appear private tend to operate within the investment architecture the PIF has drawn, following sectoral strategies and governance frameworks shaped by the fund. For nearly all foreign firms, collaboration with the PIF is requisite.

Where the Model Meets Reality

In a sandbox system, where the state directs both ownership structures and investment channels, Saudi Arabia’s economic trajectory ultimately turns on how effectively it can deliver command-and-control innovation at scale. Saudi Arabia has faced this challenge before. The mid-2000s Economic Cities program relied on the same top-down logic that underpins today’s sandbox. Despite large budgets and ambitious targets, these projects struggled to attract residents or private-sector activity, and many fell short of their employment and investment goals. They revealed how hard it is for state-designed zones to turn big visions into commercially viable outcomes. The Vision 2030 giga-projects are a larger version of this model. They aim to anchor new sectors, but several have already faced timeline revisions, scaled-back targets, and rising costs. In 2024, even the PIF reported impairments tied to delays and higher development expenses, indicating familiar execution pressures at a larger scale.

This pattern reflects ambition outpacing execution. Saudi Arabia can marshal vast capital, mobilize its bureaucracy, and move quickly at the outset of a project. The challenge emerges later: translating large visions into commercially viable, fully functioning cities and industries. Inside the sandbox, these execution challenges carry broader implications. Investors cannot diversify risk through alternative avenues because the state is the central architect of the entire system. For foreign firms, the opportunities are real, but so is the exposure: investment performance depends less on market forces than on the state’s capacity to turn plans into functioning industries. The Kingdom may be open for business, but the results of that opening will be measured by what the state can actually build.

Atulya Madhavan is a junior in Columbia University’s School of General Studies, where he majors in Data Science. He contributes to the Columbia Emerging Markets Review and works with Columbia Global Research Consulting as a project lead on real-estate analytics and low-carbon investment research. His work focuses on emerging markets, financial systems, and the intersection of policy, technology, and economic development.

Digital payments are often hailed as one of the great development success stories of the past two decades, reshaping how millions of people send, receive, and save money. In developing economies, going “cashless” has solved urgent, everyday problems: money can move instantly across long distances, workers can receive their wages directly instead of through middlemen, and people no longer have to carry large amounts of cash or wait in unsafe disbursement lines. The impact is even more pronounced for women whose economic routines often drive the everyday use of digital payments. Such empowerment requires both access to financial tools and the agency to make decisions about one’s own money, and digital finance strengthens both.

But what about the countries where digital payments have not scaled at all? And how do women’s roles within the economy—or their absence from it—help explain the difference? To explore these questions, I looked more closely at Kenya’s M-Pesa and Bangladesh’s bKash: two standout models that have transformed women’s economic lives and offer considerations for countries still struggling to make digital finance work.

Studies across countries consistently find that when women gain access to mobile wallets or digital payments, they gain greater control over their earnings, stronger bargaining power at home, and more flexibility in how they work, save, and spend. This matters enormously in developing economies, where women make up a large share of the population yet remain excluded from traditional financial systems. A 2016 study found that eight years of expanded mobile money access enabled 185,000 female-headed households to shift into business or retail as their main occupation, and extreme poverty fell by 21%. Bangladesh shows similar patterns, where women’s use of digital finance to rising entrepreneurship, higher employment, and measurable reductions in poverty. All of this evidence points to two clear truths: digital payments can help close gender gaps, and entire economies benefit when women become more economically empowered.

In Kenya, for decades, men migrated to cities for work while women remained in rural homes to manage families and farms. This created a constant flow of “upcountry” remittances—and women, as the primary receivers and managers of household budgets, sat at the center of that system. When M-Pesa launched in 2007, it plugged directly into this existing routine. Instead of traveling long distances, risking theft, or relying on informal couriers, women could receive money instantly and securely on even the most basic mobile phone.

The shift gave women hours back in the day, and they used M-Pesa to build private savings buffers, negotiate more effectively within households, and smooth consumption during emergencies. One study of women in a fishing community found that M-Pesa helped them budget more effectively; before mobile money, any cash left at home was often spent by their husbands on alcohol or other non-essentials, leaving the women without enough money to process fish the next morning. Moreover, money was stored digitally, which made it harder to access impulsively and easier to save for business needs or children’s education. Still, it is important to recognize the limits of this model. In Kenya’s remittance-driven structure, women primarily act as the receivers of money, not the earners. Their financial agency depends on whether remittances arrive at all, making it an unreliable foundation for long-term economic empowerment.

In comparison, Bangladesh’s experience with digital payments is different from Kenya’s, but it reveals an equally important story about how women benefit when financial systems meet them where they are. bKash, the country’s dominant mobile money platform, was built on decades of groundwork laid by NGOs and microfinance institutions—most notably BRAC—which had already brought millions of Bangladeshi women into informal financial networks. That foundation made it far easier for women to adopt digital tools once they arrived. Unlike Kenya, where women primarily received remittances, Bangladeshi women often needed digital finance for wages and entrepreneurship. Millions of women working in the ready-made garment (RMG) sector began receiving salaries directly through bKash, transforming payday from a physically risky, time-consuming ordeal into a private, secure transaction. A BRAC study found that women no longer had to stand in crowded factory lines with cash in hand—lines where harassment, skimming, or delayed payments were common. Instead, bKash allowed them to manage their earnings without interference.

Digital payments also supported Bangladesh’s vast network of female micro-entrepreneurs: home-based workers, tailors, food sellers, and small shop owners who could accept payments, save profits, and build financial histories without needing a formal bank account. But this progress was not driven by bKash alone. Bangladesh had unique conditions—mass internal migration, large inflows of remittances from overseas workers, and a long history of women’s participation in grassroots microfinance—that created real demand for safer, more accessible financial tools. bKash simply amplified these existing dynamics.

The success stories of Kenya and Bangladesh also highlight why digital finance has struggled to take off in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, and parts of West Africa. In these places, the limiting factor is the absence of the social and economic foundations that allowed women to become crucial adopters. In many low-adoption countries, women are far less present in the labor force, face stricter mobility restrictions, and have significantly lower access to the very tools digital finance requires. According to GSMA, women are 14% less likely globally—and 38% less likely in South Asia—to own a mobile phone than men. Without a phone, the gateway to digital payments is closed. Even when phones are available, women often struggle to obtain the official documents required to open a mobile money account. As the World Economic Forum notes, women in countries such as Bangladesh, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania face legal and social barriers to securing government IDs, and in many economies, discriminatory laws still restrict women’s ability to work at all.

These barriers make it nearly impossible for women to participate in digital finance in the ways Kenyan remittance managers or Bangladeshi garment workers did. Digital payments scaled in Kenya partly because women were already managing household budgets; they scaled in Bangladesh because millions of women were already earning wages in the RMG sector or running micro-enterprises supported by NGO networks. Of course, Bangladesh and Kenya differ in culture, gender norms, and the degree of restrictions women face. However, that contrast is what makes their success so instructive: despite their differences, both countries had social and economic structures where women were already meaningfully involved in household money management or wage-earning. Therefore, digital finance did not create women’s participation—it accelerated it.

When women have limited access to work, mobility, decision-making power, or safe public spaces, digital finance has little room to anchor itself in daily life. If women are not earning income or permitted to manage money, they simply cannot participate in digital payments in any meaningful way. And when half the population is structurally excluded from financial activity, digital finance cannot scale through them—making broader adoption far more difficult.

Ria Basu (GS ‘27) is a junior studying Economics, with a minor in English. She is interested in economic development, politics, and emerging markets.

Over the past three decades, Thailand’s economic trajectory has told a story of remarkable achievement overshadowed by persistent stagnation. Although the country has consistently posted impressive GDP growth, driven by a robust manufacturing sector and thriving tourism industry, it remains ensnared in what economists call a “middle-income trap.” The term refers to countries unable to transition from a middle-income status to a high-income, developed economy. This paradox demands an explanation: why has Thailand, with its strategic central position in Southeast Asia, major port infrastructure, and a population of over 70 million, failed to become the leading country in Southeast Asia for foreign investment?

The answer lies in two deeply interconnected societal barriers: chronic political instability and entrenched educational inequality. Notably, these obstacles do not merely coexist; they reinforce each other in a vicious cycle that undermines Thailand’s capacity to build the innovative, dynamic environment that is necessary for the foundation of a stable economy.

Thailand’s political landscape has become characterized by a virtually endless cycle of elections, protests, military coups, and constitutional revisions. Since 1932, the country has experienced over twelve successful coups and nearly 20 constitutional rewrites. This detrimental pattern has accelerated in recent decades, with major upheavals in 2006 and 2014, alongside ongoing political tensions that have paralyzed the government. Each disruption creates uncertainty that extends beyond Bangkok (Thailand’s economic hub) and directly affects economic decisions at both the national and local levels, shaping Thailand’s development trajectory.

Foreign investors, particularly those in high-value sectors such as technology and advanced manufacturing, require long-term stability to justify major capital commitments. Thailand’s traditional strengths, which are automotive manufacturing (producing nearly 2 million vehicles annually) and tourism (contributing to 12% of the nation’s GDP), can absorb political shocks relatively well due to their short time horizons. However, the more lucrative field of technology demands more sustained investment that can take years to yield returns, due to the vast amount of energy, human capital, and money needed to construct the required manufacturing facilities. When political headwinds shift suddenly, such as in the Thai military coups of 2006 and 2014, these long-term bets become more of a gamble than a secure investment. Subsequently, Thailand is able to attract value in established, less lucrative manufacturing sectors, but struggles to move up the value chain.

Vietnam’s contrasting economic success with Thailand indicates the gaps in these two countries’ road toward development. Despite having a lower per capita income and, later, economic liberalization, Vietnam has rapidly attracted major technology manufacturers, including Intel, Samsung, and Apple suppliers. Vietnam’s attractiveness to foreign direct investment can be attributed to its political stability rather than its economic fundamentals. Its single-party system provides the political continuity and stability necessary to attract the long-term investment of multinational corporations in advanced manufacturing and technology. Consequently, political instability undermines the skilled labor advantages that Thailand has yet to develop, forcing investors to heavily discount the value of future economic returns.

This political dysfunction has a second, equally damaging effect: it perpetuates deeply ingrained educational inequality that prevents Thailand from developing the necessary human capital for economic advancement. Building human capital takes time, and political instability within Thailand undermines this crucial process. Thailand’s education system illustrates a stark urban-rural divide, with Bangkok and other major urban areas offering quality education while rural provinces lag significantly behind. On international PISA tests—standardized exams designed to test international students’ proficiency in reading, math, and science—students in Bangkok score nearly half a PISA proficiency level higher in mathematics than nearly all other regions, while students living in the Northeast consistently post the lowest scores in all subjects. In 2010, 15-16-year-olds in Bangkok scored 50.6% in the Thai language category, compared to the 39% scored in Mahasarakham province. This gap is not accidental. It is a direct reflection of the political economy dynamics where elite-dominated, corrupt governments consistently underfund rural education and fail to implement comprehensive reforms. A 2012 World Bank report found that 72% of Thailand’s education expenditures were spent in Bangkok, home to just 17% of the population. In contrast, the Northeast, which contains over 34% of the population, receives only 6% of education expenditures. Instead of distributing education funding equally, the government directs much of the education budget toward schools where students already have a high likelihood of succeeding in the workforce.

The education divide results in a workforce that is unequipped to work in high-value industries. Although Thailand produces a substantial number of graduates sufficient for manufacturing assembly lines and jobs within the service sector, it lacks the broad base of technically trained workers that are required for handling technology and innovation-driven work. Since rural students represent the majority of Thailand’s youth, receiving inadequate education in science, technology, and English (skills that the premium industries of technology demand), the country’s talent pipeline remains concentrated in low-to-mid skill occupations, deepening existing inequalities between urban and rural regions. This gap in education makes Thailand a less attractive option for the investments that could propel it beyond middle-income status.

Therefore, breaking this income trap necessitates recognition that political stability and educational reform are issues that have interconnected prerequisites for development. To begin solving this predicament, Thailand must establish institutional mechanisms that reinforce policy continuity beyond election cycles. This can be done through independent bodies insulated from political turbulence. Additionally, comprehensive educational reform focused on rural provinces must become a national priority backed by sustained funding and implementation.

Ultimately, without addressing the structural barriers of political instability and educational inequality that inhibit further economic growth, Thailand risks a permanent relegation to middle-income status. In the process, it could become a cautionary tale of squandered potential in an emerging market that should have grown long ago. Every coup and cohort of inadequately educated rural youth represents another lost decade of potential development. Thailand’s future trajectory will demonstrate whether middle-income countries can escape the middle-income trap or whether their economies will remain permanently inhibited by deeply ingrained political and educational inequalities.

Maverick Au is a freshman in Columbia College and plans to major in Political Science with a concentration in Business Management. In his free time, he enjoys playing and watching tennis, exploring the city with friends, and spending time with his family.

Image Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ethiopia-says-debt-restructuring-negotiations-final-stage-2025-02-09/

As 2025 comes to an end, Ethiopia’s billion-dollar debt restructuring talks with its creditors have collapsed after months of negotiations, indicating a growing strain between both parties. These discussions highlight how global debt frameworks often leave very little room for developing countries to prioritize their own economic needs, forcing governments to choose between satisfying creditors and addressing the needs of their citizens. Ethiopia’s stalled progress captures a major question faced by many emerging economies: how can a country grow and recover concurrently while also meeting debt payments and reassuring investors and creditors? Ethiopia’s debt restructuring highlights the tension between maintaining investor confidence and helping a country build and strengthen its economy. Moreover, without updated flexibility and transparency in debt programs, developing countries risk staying stuck in cycles of debt and slow growth.

Debt restructuring is the renegotiation of what a country, person, or company owes to its creditors. Usually, this kind of restructuring involves extended payment deadlines, decreased interest rates, or reductions in the total amount owed. The goal of debt restructuring is to assist in making debt more manageable for a borrower; however, when the borrower is a developing country, the process becomes more convoluted as many parties are involved. Many creditors, including global institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other governments, can attempt to assist a country with debt restructuring; however, their interests may not match those of the country. In Ethiopia’s case, despite the significant profits available to bondholders in the initial deal, it was still rejected. Cases like these highlight how unequal the power in these relationships can be—creditors garner more influence while the borrowers must negotiate from a more inferior position.

Ethiopia’s financial problems span the past few years. Ethiopia had “defaulted on [its] bond in late 2023 and opted to rework its debt under the G20’s Common Framework initiative…,” a program created to help coordinate debt relief between different types of creditors. At first, markets reacted positively, as Ethiopia’s sole international bond rose by about 2.6 cents on the dollar after news that formal restructuring talks were beginning, which demonstrated that investors were hopeful about a potential deal. The government had initially reached an agreement with creditors in July 2025, providing $3.5 billion in cash flow relief. The next step was to negotiate with private bondholders over the nation’s $1 billion bond. These talks relied mainly on investor confidence, raising a broader question about how much room countries have to navigate within global debt frameworks when creditors are prioritized.

In October of 2024, Ethiopia proposed what seemed like a realistic restructuring plan to creditors. The plan included a reduction in principal paid upfront as well as an offer to repay missed interest payments from December 2023 and 2024 once an agreement would be reached. However, despite the terms and the potential for significant profits for bondholders, the plan was still rejected. This refusal shows the challenges Ethiopia faced when it attempted to convince private investors to take on short-term, small losses, even though those losses would make repayment more sustainable and trustworthy in the long run.

However, the entire deal cannot be analyzed without considering the IMF’s impact. The IMF has played a major role in Ethiopia’s restructuring process through the G20 Common Framework. In a report from May 2025, the IMF emphasized Ethiopia’s commitment to broader economic reforms, including moving towards a more flexible exchange rate, ending central bank financing of the nation’s government, and transitioning to “interest rate-based monetary policy.” These methods are part of a four-year, $3.4 billion arrangement aimed at stabilizing Ethiopia’s economy and improving its debt management. Despite these reforms and the IMF’s support, Ethiopia’s debt burden remains high, and meeting sustainability targets depends on growth. This shows a broader issue within the IMF’s frameworks—that their effectiveness is dependent on the growth and development outcomes of a country, which can remain uncertain in economies that undergo major structural and monetary adjustments. Even with well-designed reforms, the IMF’s programs may provide limited flexibility for countries with emerging economies.

Unfortunately, tensions with investors and creditors have only grown worse over time. According to The Reporter Ethiopia, “bondholders reportedly have reservations about the terms of the restructuring and doubts about the veracity of the country’s recent export achievements,” and Ethiopia had “registered a record-breaking USD 8.3 billion in export revenues in 2024/25.” However, bondholders stated that these figures were not reflected in IMF forecasts, and therefore they were “unwilling to accept terms they see as too lenient.” This disagreement shows a deeper lack of trust between Ethiopia and its creditors and highlights that Ethiopia’s economic performance comes secondary to investor confidence, which can ultimately be damaging to the country’s economic growth and restructuring efforts.

These ongoing challenges between Ethiopia and its creditors make it clear that the nation’s ability to manage its debt is not supported by present-day global frameworks like the G20 framework or the IMF. For Ethiopia, the challenge lies in balancing the wants of creditors and investors with the needs of the nation’s economy and citizens. Ethiopia’s debt restructuring shows how current global debt restructuring systems are not designed to help the country’s economy grow or stabilize but instead to protect the goals of creditors.

Leah Druch is a writer for the Columbia Emerging Markets Review, studying Financial Economics and History. She is interested in the intersection between international law and policy, and their impact on emerging economies. Outside of CEMR, she is involved in the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review and Mock Trial. In her free time, she enjoys dancing, ballet, and baking.

Ohio––where I’m from—is all too used to unfulfilled promises. High-speed passenger rail, for one––a train connecting the three major cities––has been “in the works” for decades. The Intel semiconductor plant is another, with its opening date pushed back to 2030 from 2025. The jobs promised with this opening, as a result, haven’t materialized, a development that stands at odds with the significant tax breaks and other incentives Ohio extended to the company. Like many Ohioans, I’m wondering how much effort is being put into American self-sufficiency to win the chip war.

Although bills like the CHIPS Act have been passed, Trump’s efforts to diminish American research capability have put the country further behind in the race. It’s imperative that the U.S. resume fighting; government, not corporate, intervention should be adopted to ensure we cross this divide. We need to focus on human capital transfer rather than knowledge transfer alone and adopt policies that allow for smoother pathways for potential talent. In particular, we should reconsider the current immigration atmosphere and promote integrated connections between academia and R&D through new funding initiatives.

The Significance of Semiconductors

The leading manufacturer of the most advanced chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), developed plants in Arizona in 2022 and plans to invest another $165 billion in American facilities. Such chips are used in cars, phones, laptops, AI systems, servers, and more, all sectors that have seen recent rises. This investment shows there’s promise in our improvement—why else would TSMC dedicate so many resources?

Under President Biden, the U.S. introduced the CHIPS Act after Chinese escalation in the South China Sea ramped up, aimed at “carry[ing] out activities relating to the creation of incentives to produce semiconductors in the United States,” in hopes of strengthening U.S. tech and reducing reliance on foreign countries. Yet, despite the act, manufacturing is 50% more expensive than in Taiwan, leaving the U.S. with a diminished capacity. As a result, American semiconductor demand continues to outpace supply.

For Taiwan, the semiconductor industry can be seen as a shield against China’s grip on the market—it’s even dubbed the “Silicon Shield.” It had a global market share of 78.1% within manufacturing in 2024, making the U.S. so reliant on Taiwan that the partnership’s loss could create a “greater negative impact on the U.S. economy than the 2008 global financial crisis.” It is argued that this reliance will protect Taiwan if Sino-Taiwanese tensions escalate; however, under Trump’s more protectionist stance, this reliance is slipping. Moreover, if Taiwan decides to take a stance against the United States, then America stands at a loss.

What puts the U.S. behind

While it’s evident America is taking steps to address this vulnerability, all of these actions only try to cover the symptoms rather than address the root cause. Simply building more plants and stockpiling materials cannot solve the larger issue. While resource allocation presents an issue, as production is most efficient when the manufacturer is geographically proximate to its inputs, human capital shortages pose a larger threat.

More importantly, Taiwan has been proactive in cultivating talent in a way that the United States has not been. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, Taiwan has advantages from funding investment incentives in R&D, collaborations between industry and academia, and the establishment of science parks, which provide infrastructure, access to talent, and regulatory support.

The U.S.’ semiconductor industry isn’t as unified across departments, research institutions, and the private sector. The opportunities that Taiwanese chip companies offer aren’t as available in the United States; perhaps that’s why local talents stay in Taiwan. America isn’t keeping pace with Taiwan’s technological innovation; it’s only been in the past couple of years that coverage truly increased, compared to Taiwan’s long-lasting dominance in the sphere.

There are only so many advantages that knowledge and capital transfers can provide; it’s not a question of what we want, but who provides it.

Bridging the gap

The U.S. should follow the playbook of the Soviet Scientists Immigration Act of 1992 (SSIA). This act simplified the process for Soviet talent, particularly those in nuclear, chemical, or biological technologies, to obtain U.S. visas. Its main premise omitted the requirement for employer sponsorships or completing the labor certification process, and as a result, 750 scientists were able to emigrate through the program. Overall, the “synthesis of Russian brainpower and American technology [led] to new approaches to problem-solving,” and refreshed the U.S. scientific landscape with new ideas and techniques.

America should attract Taiwanese talent and also those from emerging countries within the industry, such as South Korea and Japan. This will be a difficult line to draw; these states are seen as westernized and our allies along the Pacific. We don’t want to seem like we’re poaching their talent and creating increased distance from them in an already fragile international environment. However, such unity can also strengthen bilateral relationships, as such research can flow both ways and benefit from both environments.

So how can America execute this balancing act? To start, waive Trump’s new 100k fee on obtaining H1B visas—a common work visa—for deserving talent in hopes that one day we can extend this once more to exempting employer sponsorship. In this current immigration atmosphere, it is too much to immediately ask for exemptions, and the adoption of a program similar to the H1B1 visa—a program with quotas for Singaporeans and Chileans not subject to the fee—allows a smoother transition.

The visa process also needs to be expedited, allowing talent to jump ahead in line, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread backlogs. An immense amount of complex legal paperwork is needed, so dedicating a small team to provide assistance is also necessary. While there are more roadblocks within the immigration system, these are the most important first steps.

Moreover, there is a need to simulate the environment the scientists are used to abroad. We should better facilitate the research process, offer monetary incentives, and provide unparalleled opportunities for the exchange of ideas. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 showed the importance of academia in improving technological innovation; after all, education is the incubator of human capital. The act allows for universities to retain patent rights for inventions made with federal funding, but this emphasizes more marketable inventions, which can skew research priorities and stifle collaboration. By broadening the act’s scope to include non-commercial and early-stage projects, or including provisions to cross over between industry and university, more innovation can be accessed.

To increase funding and promote R&D growth, politicians should reconsider the NIST American Technology Program, a combined government-industry program that assisted many successful inventions through private capital and federal funding. It was repealed in 2007 after budgetary constraints and ideological opposition. Some criticism was valid, such as complaints about overly broad subject areas. This issue could be remedied by choosing to focus on specific industries: for us, this would be semiconductors. If they had America’s interest at heart, politicians would cross the partisan divide to promote development.

Importantly, we need to identify which specific aspects of the production process we want talent from. We need to walk the line between attracting and taking talent. It will be necessary to go global, consulting with our allies across Europe. The U.S. has a diasporic population of researchers who hold a variety of perspectives, which is an advantage Taiwan does not possess. It is imperative that America takes advantage of every opportunity it has.

Is this even possible?

Maybe not. Without explicit government support, specifically in the Research and Development sphere, Taiwan will pull ahead. Trump has scrutinized the CHIPS Act, and the cuts on research will hamper technological innovation. Our government just had a record-long 43-day shutdown, and the refusal to bridge the partisan divide is a harbinger of the conflict to come over this discussion. Researchers have fled to more welcoming environments abroad. With such a clear lack of regard for scientific innovation, these policies face a significant challenge in even being taken seriously, much less being installed.

Government policies and funding are required for success. Private companies can only do so much; enforcing a specific framework allows for increased transparency that moves America forward.

But if the implementations of improved visa processes and bolstered research opportunities are successful, we can apply them to other technology-heavy fields where the country also lacks capacity.

Abbey Zhao (Columbia College ‘28) is a writer for the Columbia Emerging Markets Review studying economics and statistics with a minor in political science. She is interested in how policy interplays with innovation, and how that drives forth domestic and international economic growth.

The mass media often frames rare earths as a U.S.–China tug‑of‑war, giving little coverage to the idea that less-industrialized countries can use geopolitics and ESG-conscious capital to climb the value chain. Malaysia, partnering with Australia, shows how to apply comparative advantage economics and sustainability practices to advance in the rare-earth value chain.

Malaysia has chosen to focus on midstream rare-earth refining, aiming to advance to high-value-added downstream manufacturing while deprioritizing upstream mining. The rare-earth value chain consists of three broad stages. Upstream covers mining and ore extraction. Midstream involves refining ores and separating semi-refined products into individual rare-earth elements, typically in oxide form. Downstream uses rare-earth elements/oxides as raw materials to produce manufactured products such as neodymium‑iron‑boron (NdFeB): permanent magnets for electric vehicles, wind turbines, and communications systems. On the surface, Malaysia may seem to have a comparative advantage in upstream mining given its 16.1 million tonnes of non-radioactive rare-earth elements, valued at approximately $180 billion. If all of Malaysia’s estimated deposits prove economically feasible, Malaysia would rank fourth among countries with rare-earth reserves, behind only China, Vietnam, and Brazil. However, Malaysia’s rare-earth deposits lie beneath rivers and tropical forests, meaning the opportunity costs of mining are far higher. Instead, Malaysia’s cheap energy, abundant water, and an established chemical engineering workforce contribute to its real comparative advantages in midstream rare-earth refining. In contrast, Australia possesses 5.7 million tonnes of rare-earth reserves, ranking sixth in the world, but has limited domestic refining capacity. This complementarity made Malaysia a natural partner with Australia.

In 2012, Lynas Rare Earths (LYC.AX), the largest Australian rare-earth mining company, began midstream refining at its facility in Malaysia. The Malaysia-based rare-earth refinery facility, representing an investment of more than $1 billion, was the first such facility constructed outside China in nearly three decades. It accounted for up to 22,000 tonnes per annum, or about 8% of the world’s separated rare-earth elements at the time, making it one of the largest rare-earth processing plants in the world. Australia supplied the ore, and Malaysia supplied the refining infrastructure and cost efficiencies — a textbook case of comparative advantage driving cross-border specialization.

In July 2025, Malaysia began its rise further up the rare-earth value chain. Lynas and South Korea’s JS Link (127120.KQ) signed a deal to develop a neodymium magnet manufacturing facility in Malaysia. In early November 2025, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced that JS Link had purchased land in Kuantan, the same city as Lynas’s refinery plant, for a $142 million neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnet manufacturing facility. With a planned capacity of 3,000 tonnes, the plant will be one of the largest of its kind in emerging markets outside China. Downstream magnet manufacturing captures significantly more value than midstream refining, enabling Malaysia to secure a larger share of profits for its economy.

Malaysia’s midstream rare-earth capabilities are attracting downstream manufacturers, forming an industrial cluster in Kuantan. Industrial clusters — geographic concentrations of related firms and institutions — create agglomeration economies. The proximity of inputs and outputs among firms along the supply chain enables them to reduce logistics costs and supply chain risks arising from transportation delays. The concentration of skilled labor in the city fosters knowledge diffusion, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that entrenches Malaysia’s competitiveness.

Yet, Malaysia’s attractiveness as a rare-earth hub rests not only on economic logic but also on hard-won regulatory credibility. Malaysia developed its capacity to regulate midstream refining industries through painful experience with environmental and public-health failures. A key precedent was Asian Rare Earth (ARE), a rare-earth processing joint venture established in 1979 in Bukit Merah, Perak state, with Mitsubishi Chemical Industries (Japan) as the technology provider and the largest shareholder. The ARE facility improperly stored sludge, a byproduct of its refining process, as residual waste. Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) such as thorium — an element which remains radioactive for billions of years — exist in ores. In nature, NORMs exist in low concentrations in ores and are therefore harmless. However, industrial processing concentrates NORMs into what scientists call technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORMs): a substance harmful to human beings if exposed in high concentrations. ARE’s improper storage of TENORMs led to environmental contamination of the surrounding area. Community advocates, several media reports, and medical testimony linked this exposure to elevated local rates of miscarriages, congenital anomalies, and childhood leukemia during the 1980s and early 1990s. After years of protests and litigation, the government ordered operations to cease in 1992 and the joint venture was permanently shut down.

Public concern over radioactive waste resurfaced when Lynas began operations in Kuantan, Malaysia, in 2012. At that time, the Kuantan refinery facility performed cracking and leaching using ore transported from Lynas’s mine at Mount Weld in Western Australia. Cracking uses high temperatures and concentrated acid to break apart the ore’s mineral structure. Leaching then dissolves the rare-earth elements into a water-based solution for further processing. These steps produce two outputs: TENORMs, which remain in liquid form and contain concentrated radioactive residues; and mixed rare-earth carbonate (MREC), a solid intermediate product containing multiple unseparated rare-earth elements. The liquid TENORMs are the radioactive residues that residents in Kuantan did not welcome. Public protests persisted for more than a decade.

As Malaysian political pressure mounted, the government used time-bound, conditional licenses as credible commitments to change Lynas’s payoff. Renewal conditions tied to residue management raised the expected cost of retaining those steps in Kuantan. Facing increasing risk that its operating license would not be renewed, Lynas began constructing a complementary facility in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, a 220-mile drive from Mount Weld, in 2021. By 2024, Lynas had commenced cracking and leaching at Kalgoorlie, retaining radioactive TENORMs in Western Australia and shipping MREC to Malaysia for separation into individual rare-earth elements. This renegotiation reflected a recalculation of comparative advantage. Once radiological externalities were recognized, the efficient location for cracking and leaching shifted from Malaysia to Australia.

Australia and Malaysia exhibit complementary comparative advantages across Lynas’s value chain, making the Western Australia–Kuantan arrangement efficient. In Ricardian and Heckscher–Ohlin terms, each location specializes according to its factor endowments.

On one hand, Australia contributes high-quality mineral deposits in Western Australia, where Mount Weld provides the ore, and Kalgoorlie performs cracking and leaching. Both inland sites share the same semi-arid climate, with dry, hot conditions, persistent clear skies, and limited groundwater, which provide natural advantages for handling residues. Cracking and leaching produce two types of waste: water-based waste solutions containing dissolved radioactive materials, and solid tailings. Water-based waste solutions can be temporarily stored in large evaporative ponds lined with impermeable materials at the bottom and sides, where the sun evaporates the water naturally, leaving behind dried residues for long-term storage. Western Australia’s arid climate makes this approach highly effective—water evaporates quickly, and minimal rainfall reduces the risk of overflow or groundwater pollution. Tailings are typically transported via pipelines as slurry—a mixture of solids and water—and deposited in engineered storage facilities. The water in the slurry drains and then evaporates over time, leaving behind solid waste. The dry climate again favors waste management.

Additionally, Australia has a deep talent pool in mining engineering and radiation management. Australian regulators have deep experience in monitoring and enforcing radiation and tailings standards, reflecting the country’s extensive minerals industry. Mining communities in Western Australia are accustomed to tailings facilities, providing the social acceptance necessary to site new storage areas. These attributes make Western Australia well-suited for mining and the cracking–and–leaching stage, where radioactive residues are concentrated and require stringent containment. Cracking and leaching do not create new radioactive material, they concentrate thorium and other radioactive substances already present in the ore. The total amount of radioactive material in Western Australia does not increase. Because MREC represents only a small fraction of the original ore mass, cracking and leaching in Western Australia dramatically reduce shipping volume and costs to Malaysia.

Across the Indo-Pacific, Malaysia contributes different strengths to the later stages of Lynas’s value chain. Kuantan performs solvent extraction and product finishing—processes that refine MREC into separated rare-earth elements or derivatives. These stages require large volumes of chemicals, reliable electricity, abundant water, and a skilled midstream industrial workforce. Kuantan offers all of these at a competitive cost. Kuantan has developed into a regional petrochemical hub, with chemical companies sourcing locally. Kuantan’s location on the South China Sea offers easy port access for exporting finished products to customers in Japan, South Korea, and the United States. Electricity and industrial water are cheaper and more readily available in Malaysia than in remote Western Australia, where infrastructure costs are higher. Importantly, Malaysia is more experienced in handling chemical waste than radioactive waste.

The evolution of the Malaysia-Australia partnership depicts how comparative advantage must be dynamically recalculated to reflect environmental and social realities. The initial arrangement, while economically logical on paper, failed to account for the significant radiological externality associated with cracking and leaching in Kuantan’s humid tropical environment. Through regulatory action backed by persistent public advocacy, Malaysia forced this externality into financial calculations. This sustainability approach led to a more rational and sustainable division of labor. Australia now leverages its vast, arid landscape and deep mining expertise for upstream extraction and residue-intensive processing, while Malaysia capitalizes on its mature chemical engineering ecosystem, skilled workforce, and strategic port access for the complex, high-skill stages of midstream separation.

Malaysia demonstrates that a nation’s factor endowments include not only raw materials and labor but also regulatory credibility, social license, and environmental suitability. By applying ESG principles in industrial policy, Malaysia turned a public health controversy into a source of competitive strength. The country successfully repositions itself from a cost-convenience location to a hub of regulatory credibility, attracting the downstream investment needed to climb the rare-earth value chain. Malaysia’s journey offers a clear and replicable blueprint for how other nations can leverage geopolitics and sustainability to forge their own path to industrial advancement.

Nathan Hu is a freshman at Columbia College studying Economics, with a foundation in research and finance. A published researcher with multiple academic articles in history and psychology, he brings analytical rigor to understanding economic policy and market dynamics. In his free time, he enjoys playing tennis, running, and spending time with friends.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered one the largest energy shocks in Europe in the 21^st century. Poland entered 2022 heavily reliant on the Russian oil and gas economy. The crisis transformed long-standing commercial relationships between Warsaw and the Kremlin into a macroeconomic crisis. Shocks in oil and gas supplies led to inflation, slower growth, and higher prices, exposing how tight energy security is tied to broader economic stability. Against these market conditions, energy independence became a core strategy for self-sufficiency and true economic freedom. Poland’s diversification efforts transformed its economic model from fragile in the face of volatility to a strategically placed and ready for market turmoil, which allowed its government to make decisions that satisfy interests of Polish people and not Russian corporate giants.

Poland’s pre-war overreliance on Russian oil and gas imports exposed the country to macroeconomic risks that materialized after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, contributing to lower GDP, higher prices, and surging inflation. In 2021, 74.0% of all gas and 60% of all oil imported by Poland came from Russia. Following the Russian aggression in 2022, the price of natural gas on TTF (Title Transfer Facility, a virtual European gas trading hub located in the Netherlands that sets the benchmark price for natural gas in Europe) increased by ~590.0% compared to the 2015-2019 averages, while oil prices rose by ~100.0% for Russian oil. Consequently, broad oil and gas market shocks affected the Polish economy in several ways. Total GDP reduction of 2.4% is attributed to the markets under review. Gas supply shocks raised relative domestic gas prices by 46.0%. Oil market volatility increased relative domestic fuel prices by 13.0%. As a result, the whole economy bore costs of the market’s turbulence: Poland’s HICP inflation averaged 13.2% in 2022, compared to a geometric mean of 1.5% over 2010-2019. Poland’s heavy reliance on oil and gas imports from Russia compromised its economic sovereignty by being dependent on a politically unpredictable regime with revisionist ambitions. By trading crucial commodities such as oil and gas with the Kremlin, Poland effectively placed itself in a dilemma: diversify its domestic oil and gas market model away from Russia which will put upward pressure on government spending or remain reliant on cheap commodities and pay even higher costs in the long run.

Import diversification has been underway in Poland regardless of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which only became a catalyst for rapid changes. Oil imports had already been declining for several years even before Russian aggression: the share of oil imported from Russia has fallen by almost 30.0% over the past decade. However, the events of February 2022 forced Poland to take even more radical measures for the sake of its economic independence. Actions undertaken consisted of efforts to decrease Russian imports in the private sector, more efficient exploitation of existing capabilities and cooperation with neighboring countries such as Slovakia. Domestic refineries decreased their exposure to Russian oil from 61.0% in 2021 to 42.0% in 2022, in 2023 they imported less than 10.0% of their oil from Russia. Furthermore, Poland has expanded its storage bases in the city of Gdansk, and unlocked more volume at its’ largest transshipment base, Naftoport, which is in Gdansk as well. Poland is diversifying its oil infrastructure not only domestically, but also by building joint projects with its neighboring countries: in May 2022 Poland and Slovakia finished construction of a Vyrava interconnector pipeline, which significantly improved the trading efficiency between the two. On the other hand, Poland’s gas diversification away from Russia was incentivized by Gazprom (Russian state-owned gas company) itself when in April 2022 they completely suspended its natural gas supplies.

Poland’s early investments in gas diversification prevented a major supply crisis when Gazprom cut flows. In 2022 Poland enlarged the already existing LNG terminal Świnoujście which connects the Czech Republic and Germany. Furthermore, in May of the same year Poland opened the Poland-Lithuania interconnector which began its construction all the way back in 2020. In addition, the government was actively involved in risk mitigation and placed construction of the FSRU (floating storage registration unit) in the Gulf of Gdansk on a fast-track investment track, which will allow it to diversify further away from Russia at a higher speed. Poland’s gas initiative, which was started a long time before the Russian aggression, clearly demonstrates the importance of diversification. Poland was aware of the need to move away from Russian oil and gas a long time before the Ukrainian war, consequently they were on a fast track to complete all their transitions as soon as February 2022 events took place. Even though Poland was still damaged by the structural changes to the energy market, due to their wise energy policy they were able to relatively smooth out the consequences of the energy crisis. However, successful policy in the past does not always lead to the right decisions in the future. Further diversification and awareness to external risks that can shock supplies should be considered when mapping out economic independence moving forward.

Poland’s forward-looking strategy rests on infrastructure expansion and regional integration. Gas supply diversification will directly depend on Poland’s ability to deliver on the construction of the Baltic pipeline which will go Norway-Denmark-Poland as well as maintaining and further developing their infrastructure in Poland to be able to efficiently transport the gas across the country. It takes the same approach with the oil supply: development of infrastructure such as Pomeranian Crude Oil Pipeline and Boronow-Trzebinia section of the existing Plock-Koluszki-Boronow fuel pipeline will allow it to increase transmission efficiency which, as a result, will lead to adequate storage capacities. Hence, the pattern of the energy policy is clear and can be summarized as a wide connection to diverse sources of imports in order to mitigate risks of being over-reliant on a single supplier. Poland treats energy independence as a precondition for economic sovereignty by reducing its exposure to external coercion and severe macroeconomic shocks that it went through during the 2022 Energy Crisis.

Poland’s trajectory shows how pre-war overreliance on Russian oil and gas resulted in macroeconomic vulnerability once Russia invaded Ukraine. Pre-existing diversification measures and accelerated government policies and private sector efforts cushioned but did not eliminate the shock of slower GDP growth, soaring prices, and disrupted supplies. Today’s strategy of expanding pipelines, storage, and regional interconnectors is designed to hard-wire a more resilient and diversified energy system. In that sense, the 2022 Energy Crisis made clear that for Poland, energy independence is not just a technical goal to satisfy bureaucratic quotas, but a requirement to reclaim its economic freedom of action.

Alex, originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, is a sophomore at Columbia University School of General Studies majoring in Economics-Political Science. Prior to Columbia, he spent a year working for a specialty lender credit shop in Boca Raton, Florida. At Columbia Emerging Markets Society he focuses on Energy Markets in Eastern Europe. He is interested in how energy, geopolitics, and risk shape outcomes for emerging economies and investors who operate around them.

Religious organizations in Ghana are exploding. As of October 2025, there were nearly 800 in the West African nation, administering services ranging from education to healthcare to humanitarian assistance. These organizations serve Ghana’s three major religious groups: Muslims, Christians, and followers of indigenous religious traditions. Among Christians, mainline Protestants were favored during colonial rule and now experience relatively greater levels of socioeconomic achievement compared to other groups. Still, the dramatic growth of Pentecostal churches, whose followers firmly believe that religious donations will lead to economic prosperity, may reshape the nation’s economy by channeling financial resources into new religious organizations.

The expansion of religious organizations has prompted questions from Ghanaians and international scholars over these organizations’ roles as informal providers of social services and financial guidance, all fueled by a steady revenue stream of transnational remittances, or money transfers sent back home by emigrants abroad. Remittances from an estimated 1.05 million emigrants abroad rank second only to gold and other exports as Ghana’s most significant sources of foreign revenue. An estimated 26% increase in remittance earnings could cover the nation’s annual external borrowing needs.

Much of this revenue is channeled through religious organizations, which are important providers of informal economic growth and social services. Multiple data points suggest that, for both theological and practical reasons, Ghanaians are more inclined to donate money to churches than to pay taxes to the state. Still, their transnational funding, via diaspora remittances, raises accountability concerns in the sub-Saharan state. As the West African nation looks to a future ‘beyond aid,’ religious organizations, working in conjunction with civil society organizations to deliver on social services and financial education, may hold the key. By powering a more transparent and accountable financial environment, Ghanaians may reap the rewards of both heaven and earth, establishing the country as a regional hub for development.

Across Ghana, faith-based organizations fill gaps in social services left by a weak or underfunded state and other non-governmental organizations, particularly for rural residents. In many areas of endemic poverty and underdevelopment, people place more trust in faith-based organizations, since they are integrated with local communities and are culturally specific. This sense of trust helps explain why Ghanaians in the diaspora—driven away by economic, environmental, and regional security pressures—are more likely to send remittances to religious organizations, which are already heavily dependent on outside funds, than state agencies or foreign NGOs. For example, the main sources of funding for Christian Aid, an NGO that works to tackle poverty among marginalized groups in Ghana, usually originate from foreign sources. Still, it is important to acknowledge the difference between domestic church tithes, which can compose up to 10% of a church member’s earnings, and diaspora remittance revenue streams, especially since the latter are more vulnerable to foreign financial and political dynamics. Since remittances can be volatile sources of funding, some churches have tried to pull from more stable, local funding sources by using tithes, but most still rely primarily on outside donor funding; diversification of funding remains a critical issue. As such, religious organizations function as important actors in socioeconomic development, offering a blueprint for how civil organizations can navigate an unstable financial environment.

This dependence on foreign funding is only exacerbated by Ghana’s status as a high remittance-recipient state, coupled with its debts to lenders like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. While some remittances go directly to individual family members, collective transfers to religious organizations are increasingly common. Ultimately, religious organizations become intermediaries for transnational capital.

Religious organizations also impact individual financial decision-making; church teachings are particularly influential in risk, savings, and insurance decisions. Many churchgoers do not view religious giving as a sacrifice of other expenses and trust in the church as a resilient, financially autonomous institution that can weather socioeconomic shake-ups. A recent study of members of a Pentecostal church in Accra, Ghana, found evidence that low formal insurance uptake can be attributed to a belief in ‘spiritual insurance.’ Church members believed that their donations could influence God to reduce the probability of personal economic shocks, such as a death in the family, thus devaluing formal insurance enrollment. However, during “revival weeks,” or special periods when church members are expected to attend church every day and donate money, insurance enrollment rates went up, particularly at the encouragement of trusted, charismatic pastors. If church leaders can encourage members to invest in formal insurance plans, then religious institutions may promote rather than impede further formal financialization.

Since religious organizations effectively function as alternative—or even partner—civil society funding sources to NGOs and state agencies, their financial security is critical to national economic development. Religious organizations are already well-equipped to lead development; Ghana has a large religious base, a culture of giving, and expanding technological infrastructure to facilitate the process. During the COVID-19 pandemic, religious organizations like Caritas Ghana and Ghana Muslim Missions were some of the first institutions to respond with donations to combat the virus, long before the federal government’s National Covid-19 Trust Fund. The NGO Street Children Empowerment Foundation has also leveraged digital giving platforms to facilitate donations from domestic religious groups (whose donations make up 10% of revenue) and emigrants wanting to “sponsor” children, who donate an average of 30 euros per month.

Many Ghanaians in the diaspora also feel a strong connection to religious organizations in the ‘homeland,’ linking them to a transnational community of believers – belonging and belief go hand in hand. Going forward, religious leaders should leverage their legitimacy among Ghanaians – at home and abroad – to encourage sound personal financial practices and collaborate with other civil organizations to deliver essential social services.

Still, religious giving is not without its limitations. Many religious organizations struggle with financial management, being overreliant on outside funding and inexperienced leadership. Issues of weak transparency and accountability are endemic, since organizations may not have the institutional capabilities to regulate budgeting, auditing, and risk management. These behaviors may be particularly discouraging to essential donors like middle-class and high-net-worth individuals in the diaspora.

For Ghanaian households, remittances represent a double-edged sword. While remittances reduce poverty levels, they also exacerbate income inequality. One study found that households receiving international remittances experienced an 88.1% drop in poverty levels, but the receipt of these remittances caused the Gini coefficient, a measure of income or wealth inequality, to rise by 17.4%. Some ethno-religious groups, like Muslims, also proportionally receive more remittances than other groups, potentially exacerbating social divisions and highlighting the need for closer examination of Ghana’s remittance system. These data points do not suggest that remittances are a net negative. Instead, remittances, just like the religious organizations they help fund, should be regulated and perhaps eventually channeled into developmental projects.

Powered by diaspora remittances, religious organizations are more than able to spearhead socioeconomic change, from encouraging healthy personal financial decisions–like enrolling in formal insurance plans–to providing marginalized communities with essential services. Still, both organizational financial management and remittance procedures need greater transparency. Without shared civil and state collaboration, religious organizations will not be able to actualize their potential to accelerate socioeconomic development. However, if Ghana invests in religious organizations as influential socioeconomic actors, it can serve as a model for sustainable, civil, economic, and social development across West Africa.

Audrey Jones is a freshman at Columbia University (CC ‘29) studying Political Science and Religion as a John Jay Undergraduate Scholar. She is interested in the intersections of religion and public policy, socio-economic development in the postcolonial world, and political theory. She hopes to pursue a career in academia, public policy, or law. Audrey enjoys writing creative and academic pieces, reading, and exploring New York City’s Five Boroughs.

Across Latin America, financial literacy remains strikingly low, even among well-educated populations. This lack of financial literacy is not unique to the region, but in Latin America it plays a significant role in sustaining inequality across borders. With the advent of fintech—that is, financial technology—you would expect that financial literacy would improve accordingly. However, in Latin America, where fintech adoption is skyrocketing, an interesting paradox exists: access is expanding, but comprehension is lagging.

Colombia offers a striking example. Despite a thriving fintech sector and growing digital-payment infrastructure, most Colombians remain financially uninformed. According to Banco de la República, only 16 percent of adults can answer basic financial-literacy questions correctly. The surprising part: 80 percent understand inflation. Sustainable financial inclusion in Colombia cannot rely solely on mobile apps or bank accounts. It instead requires culturally tailored education models that cultivate financial understanding alongside access.

Colombia’s financial literacy challenges are well-documented. While the country has made significant gains in bringing more citizens into the formal financial system—as discussed earlier—significant knowledge gaps about how to make informed financial decisions remain. Research has shown that while Colombians are gaining basic familiarity with financial concepts, structural and educational gaps mean this knowledge does not consistently lead to effective behavior, such as protecting themselves against inflationary shocks and managing debt.

In recent years, Colombia has become a leading regional player in fintech. According to a 2025 study on fintech and inclusion by Isaza Lopez and Moreno Renteria, the advent of mobile banking, peer-to-peer lending, and digital wallets has ushered millions into the financial ecosystem. Apps such as Nequi and Daviplata today serve as on-ramps for the unbanked, providing seamless transfers and micro-savings capabilities that were previously unavailable to large swaths of the population.

According to the OECD, financial literacy involves more than knowing the definitions of basic financial concepts like inflation; rather, it is the ability to apply knowledge to real-life decisions. In Colombia, the gap between theoretical awareness and practical understanding is wide. The result of this disconnect is that when economic fortunes ebb and flow—as they have during recent periods of inflation—citizens who do not possess keen financial reasoning suffer the most.

Although millions have adopted digital financial tools, this growth masks a more profound problem: technology alone cannot ensure financial empowerment. According to the World Bank in the report, “Digital Economy For Latin America and the Caribbean” (2023), digital access can outpace users’ comprehension of the tools at their disposal. Most of them are using fintech platforms for convenience, never really taking an interest in understanding how fees, interest rates, or data privacy work.

This sets up a number of disturbing contradictions in Colombia. While digital transactions have significantly increased, the quality of the engagements remains superficial. People understand how to send money, but not why certain products may hurt or help them in the long term. Missing robust educational frameworks, fintech can be a double-edged sword: it empowers superficially but disempowers substantively.

Access isn’t enough. As mentioned in OECD’s “Toolkit for Measuring Financial Literacy and Financial Inclusion” from 2022, inclusion policies tend to focus more on account and credit availability instead of encouraging critical thinking about money management. Colombia is no exception; even with government initiatives like Banca de las Oportunidades, there has been little to no improvement in financial comprehension.

Cultural and socioeconomic factors exacerbate this issue. As stated by CAF’s 2023 regional report on “Financial Education and Inclusion in Latin America,” communities with lower levels of formal education are less likely to trust financial institutions and more vulnerable to informal credit systems, seeing as though they often carry predatory interest rates and perpetuate cycles of insecurity. Further, the diversity that has characterized the country, from indigenous to rural and urban, means one-size-fits-all education campaigns often fall flat. Taken together, these persistent inequalities compound and contribute to economic stagnation, ultimately undermining emerging market development.

What’s missing is context. Most literacy programs are based on Westernized, textbook approaches to finance; local economies may be quite different. For instance, informal savings pools, variously called cadenas or natilleras, are a common tradition among rural Colombians. Building on such culturally familiar models in formal education programs could create a more intuitive bridge between informal and institutional finance.

Closing the literacy gap in Colombia requires that policymakers and private actors treat financial education as infrastructure that is invested in, maintained, and localized. One promising blueprint comes from Mexico, where a 2023 study about Mexico’s “Fintech and Financial Education Ecosystem” by the Inter-American Development Bank shows that hybrid partnerships between fintech firms and educational NGOs can effectively merge digital access with personalized learning. In this case, these partnerships have taken the form of community workshops with app-based learning modules, allowing users to refine their understanding of crucial concepts like budgeting, interest rates, and credit.

In Colombia, this might look like community-driven financial literacy centers that are codesigned with fintech startups and a university. These hubs could match smartphone-based simulations with culturally relevant lessons, explaining inflation through food prices or saving through agricultural cycles. A 2022 UNDP report on “Digital Inclusion in Colombia” underlines the need to combine digital and human interaction to engender trust and retention in marginalized communities.

In addition, the fintech leaders in Colombia, like Nequi, RappiPay, and Movii, could consider a “teach-first” strategy by embedding interactive financial quizzes in the local language into their applications, along with transparent and clear breakdowns of fees. The idea is not to trivially gamify finance but to make learning about finances as automatic as checking a bank balance. It is important to note, however, that while these ideas may benefit them in the long run via increased recognition and engagement, fintech leaders may still need to be incentivized by the government in the short run, for instance through tax benefits and innovation grants.

Financial literacy is the invisible backbone of economic empowerment. Without it, financial inclusion risks becoming performative–an illusion of progress leaving citizens more vulnerable than before. Colombia’s fintech revolution has proven that access can expand rapidly. But comprehension, trust, and sustainable behavior take time, culture, and education.

If true economic inclusion is to be achieved in Colombia, it may need to look beyond the next digital app and invest in the human capacity to understand money. It is financial literacy, not just fintech, that helps determine whether or not true inclusion occurs, rather than just another form of dependency.

Santiago “Santi” Quintero is currently a first-year at Columbia College planning on pursuing a bachelors in Economics and Mathematics-Statistics. He is interested in the intersection of financial markets and statistics, with a focus on understanding the patterns that influence global economies. A firm believer in the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats, Santi seeks to financially empower those in his community through both in-person workshops and online discussions.

Image Source: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Image

The global supply chain is a complex chain of relationships and transactions that fuel our day-to-day lives and underpin our modern economy. Despite the significant importance of the global supply chain, it still faces persistent disruptions and incidents that go beyond isolated events. Emerging markets such as the Dominican Republic (DR) are increasingly susceptible to supply chain volatility and should consider implementing AI-centered management systems.

For any given product, there are tens, if not hundreds, of parts transported across borders before being manufactured and ultimately delivered to consumers. Nearly every good and service is influenced by international trade relationships and geopolitics. Oftentimes, at the root of these disruptions are geopolitical tensions, where countries are at odds with one another, leading to trade restrictions through sanctions and tariffs. Unstable supply chain behaviour is particularly adverse for smaller countries that already face political instability and economic volatility.

The DR is a Caribbean island, well known for its beautiful beaches, resorts, and Latin culture. Tourism is a major driver for the country’s economy, accounting for 16 percent of the nation’s GDP and contributing to more than 800,000 jobs. The tourism industry relies on a steady flow of imported goods to accommodate guests and provide them with a memorable experience. Furthermore, supply chain disruptions impact more than just singular industries; they affect the broader flow of products entering and leaving the countries.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the DR’s path forward seemed uncertain amid the global halt to travel and production, exacerbated by pre-existing staff shortages: 72% of surveyed companies reported that the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on their operations. The DR faced a 6.7% decline in GDP compared to the year prior to COVID-19. This came as a major blowback to the island’s development in light of its progress in preventing poverty. Leading up to the pandemic, the poverty rate in the country had nearly halved.

Following the pandemic, many management teams shifted towards automating supply chain positions as a solution to the staff-related shortages. Of the surveyed companies, 63% indicated increased automation and investments in AI and machine learning. This represents a shift in how large corporations approach supply chain management, favoring a more comprehensive, data-driven approach over a traditionally large and complex supply chain system.

As a result, this wave of automation had created an equity gap. As major corporations invest heavily in AI and machine learning infrastructure, smaller countries and emerging markets are at risk of developing dependence on developed economies for advanced technology. Data suggest that the AI readiness of a country is correlated with its industrial development status. Therefore, developed economies are more likely to implement AI-focused management systems in comparison to developing economies such as the DR.

In light of these barriers, countries like the DR should prioritize investments in data analysis and management systems guided by AI and new technologies. Such systems, if tailored for a country’s specific needs, could help prepare for and mitigate supply chain bottlenecks and disruptions before they occur. Realistic AI deployment due to the high cost of starting and maintaining it should zoom in on sector-specific needs and present scalable approaches suited for the country’s particular vulnerabilities.

In comparison, Singapore, an emerging market and a smaller island nation similar to the DR, has already begun AI implementation into its supply chain systems. For example, Singapore implemented an AI risk assessment system created by the Transport Asset Protection Association (TAPA), which mined crime data and security ratings of facilities to predict the potential risk associated with a transportation route. In cases where a route was deemed high-risk, the TAPA system provided alternative routes with lower risk.

For the DR, the precedent that Singapore has set presents an opportunity to support a government-backed data collection process that compiles import/export data and employs AI systems, such as those TAPA offers, to create a preventive system for unforeseen disruptions. This way, smaller businesses aren’t required to build independent systems, reducing the fiscal barrier to AI deployment and overall making automation a more equitable application for various sectors in the country.

Furthermore, to reduce the cost associated with reliance on external companies offering AI deployment tools, it is essential to train data analysts and supply chain experts to locally maintain AI systems and eliminate the reliance on more developed countries. This ensures that solutions and changes are made with the country’s evolving needs in mind, rather than profit-driven approaches that prioritize a company’s revenue statement.

As technology and our global economy continue to develop, they are more intertwined and reliant on each other than ever before. In the race to automate systems to approach modern problems with modern solutions, developing economies should consider implementing small-scale applications to stay competitive and engaged in global market changes.

Rabira Dosho is a freshman studying finance and political science with an interest in supply chain efficiency and geopolitics. In his free time, he enjoys working out, cooking, and meeting new people.

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In The Middle East, oil and natural gas actually account for 95% of the region’s electricity generation. Yet today, the Middle East has become one of the fastest growing solar energy markets in the world, second only to China. Within this broader regional transformation, Israel is emerging as a frontrunner in the region, primarily because of its structured government policies designed to build a leading solar industry. Encouraging the development of solar energy allows Israel and countries around the globe to diversify their energy sources and create energy security. Israel’s government policies can be broken down into three main categories: targeted subsidies, streamlined regulation, and strategic public investment.

The Israeli government’s implementation of targeted subsidies has been a root cause of the large and continued adoption of solar energy. The country’s geography is a core reason as to why this implementation has been heavily pushed. Israel has roughly 300-330 days of sunshine per year, which is higher than the global average. Additionally, it holds expansive deserts that remain largely uninhabited, serving as attractive basis points for energy innovation and clean energy development. In order to capitalize on this geographic advantage, the government has aggressively subsidized its solar initiatives. In February of 2025, for example, Israel’s Ministry of Energy set a target to install 100,000 new solar rooftops by 2030, and is planning on accomplishing this with its tax relief and feed-in tariffs in the near future. The ministry’s goal is to reduce the barrier to entry for consumers investing in the solar energy space, which would therefore accelerate the distribution of the energy across Israel. These feed-in tariffs specifically are broken down into track net-metering programs for rooftop solar panels, which essentially allows a consumer to send back any excess energy generated back to the power grid. The Israeli government introduced multiple tariff tracks to address the issue of risk, notably through the rapid return and index-linked tracks. These were designed to shorten the investment payback period and protect the long-term tariff value against inflation, overall ensuring an above market price for excess energy produced by citizens.

Beyond these financial incentives for Israeli citizens, the government’s reforms in regulation and policy have also played a similar role in shaping the solar industry’s projected growth. In this context, administrative regulations are being relaxed in order to facilitate the adoption of solar power across the country. In 2023, the Electricity Authority of Israel decided to introduce a more loosened and easier permit process for solar energy systems in storage units. This adjustment allowed solar producers that operated on projects classified under low voltage networks (i.e. schools and farms) to connect their solar systems and battery units without complex legal conflicts. Historically, acquiring permits for these types of projects meant undergoing lengthy and expensive approval processes. This is now no longer the case. On a similar note, in early 2025, the Israeli government approved two large scale solar projects with a goal to produce over 250 megawatts of power for Israel’s national grid. These projects were taken on by Israel’s local energy companies, and were able to be swiftly implemented because of easier government regulations. The government’s intervention and effort in reducing regulations has made Israeli solar energy a less risky investment, and thus more attractive to companies and investors.

In addition to subsidies and regulatory reform, the Israeli government has also directly invested in the solar industry. These investments are targeted towards long term and sustainable projects that are deemed strategic in the advancement of solar energy adoption in the region. In February 2025, the national tender awarded contracts to build 1.5GW energy storages in Israel, which has been estimated to be valued at ILS 3 billion, or $840 million. This initiative represents a hefty commitment by Israeli authorities to boost development of solar projects in the country. Investments in research and development are also seen as strategic investments by the government, which is understood through their BIRD Energy partnership with the United States. The Israel Innovation Authority funded research projects on solar panels and battery storages in universities and private companies with the intention of encouraging technological advancement in solar energy. Specifically, these research projects are tasked with designing panels and storage units that are well suited for Israel’s dry and desert-like environment.

It is useful to compare these advancements in Israel to a similar leader in solar development in the MENA region: Morocco. Morocco has a primary focus on large and centralized solar projects funded through partnerships internationally. In August 2025, Morocco was able to finance a multi billion dollar solar power facility, the Noor Ouarzazte Solar Complex, from organizations like the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the European Union. This project positions Morocco as a major exporter of solar energy, possibly to European countries. These projects differ from Israel’s projects that are centred around a citizen driven approach, in that Morocco is more focused on mega projects financed through international bodies. While both countries will continue to see long-term progress in the solar industry, Israel’s primary focus is doing so through government policy that encourages greater distribution, flexibility, and investment in the country.

Israel’s rise as a solar leader in the Middle East has been primarily driven by careful government policy. Particularly, the use of targeted subsidies has made solar power financially attractive to individuals and firms across the region. In addition, the implementation of streamlined regulations has promoted effectiveness and reduced challenges for investors, combined with strategic public investments that have guaranteed the infrastructure and research necessary for sustainable growth. through subsidies, regulatory reform, and strategic investment. In doing so, citizens, businesses, and investors are now encouraged more than ever to invest in the solar industry and are slowly developing confidence in its long term presence in the region.

Benjamin Halimi (CC ‘29) is a writer at CEMR studying financial economics. His interests include the MENA region and renewable energy.