G20 Summit – problem or solution?

Our guests:

Irwin Collier is a professor for economics at the John F. Kennedy Insitute in Berlin. He says: “It is much better to have a recurring scheduled forum for coordinating responses to common problems and adding to the agenda than counting on ad hoc meetings to be arranged as crises build are become manifest.  Protests are important for agenda setting but when they reflect merely the performative expression of utopian fantasies, they are a distraction at best and not a particularly wise form of popular mobilization.”

 

Mekonnen Mesghena works for the Heinrich-Boell-Foundation. His main topic is migration. He says: "World trade, 2030 Agenda, and Migration and refugee flows will be discussed at the summit of the powerful and the important – and the African continent with its 1.2 billion people is almost absent. This verges on neo-colonialism!"

 

Dagmar Dehmer works for the daily newspaper “Der Tagesspiegel”. She is an expert on development politics and environmental issues. And she says: „The Compact for Africa sounds like a no brainer: Just bring companies from outside to invest in African infrastructure. The Problem is, that only a small number of countries is able to provide the regulatory infrastructure for such investments. And often the people on the ground have no advantage from those infrastructures, because they are to poor to access them.“