Fisheries may be an ancient economic activity, but nowadays they are at the forefront of globalisation. First, there is the trade itself: a blue hake caught off the coast of New Zealand by a Japanese vessel may be processed in China before being flown to a market in London or Paris.

The gloomy image that has for so long hung over the world’s largest continent may at last be lifting.
Conflict and disease remain a bane, and there are challenges in areas like governance and transport, but as we reported in our last issue (No 255, May 2006), the OECD Development Centre’s latest African Economic Outlook is upbeat about future economic growth there.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosts a special conference with heads of international organisations on “Fair Ground Rules for a Socially Equitable and Open Global Economy,” Berlin, 19 December 2007. To Ms Merkel’s right are Angel Gurría (OECD), Pascal Lamy (WTO) and Juan Somavia (ILO), and to her left are Germany’s labour minister, Olaf Scholz, Robert Zoellick (World Bank) and Dominique Strauss-Kahn (IMF).

Both the size and the relative incidence or frequency of the foreign-born population have increased in all OECD countries since 1995. So while there have been large increases in traditional migration countries such as the US and New Zealand, there have also been sharp rises in Denmark, Korea, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Spain, where inward migration has recently taken off.

If Shakespeare was right, and the world is a stage, then “Gathering Storm” could be the title of the play as we enter 2008. With a US economy flirting with recession, the euro area losing stamina under a strong euro, a barrel of oil close to $100, international food and commodity prices reaching record levels and climate change intensifying, it looks like we are heading into a turbulent zone.

Something new is happening in Africa. Once talk of investment in the continent’s countries was dismissed as idealism. Now global investors are turning their eyes–and their funds–to a new investment frontier. Is this short-term euphoria?

Centres of higher learning often exude a rarefied air. From the spires of Oxford to the lanes of Bologna, a remoteness from local communities and disdain for the commercial world are still a common characterisation, if not a tradition.