Rod Alence
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ralence.bsky.social
Rod Alence
@ralence.bsky.social
80 followers 76 following 170 posts
Politics and political economy of Africa, based at Wits University in Johannesburg.
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ralence.bsky.social
He's always been such a whale lover.
apnews.com/article/rfk-...
"Kathleen Kennedy said when she was 6 years old, her dad got word that a dead whale had washed ashore. He got a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head and strapped it to the roof of their minivan for a five-hour drive home. 'Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,' Kathleen Kennedy recalls. 'We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.'"
August 26, 2025 at 7:19 PM
ralence.bsky.social
Have you seen this one, which displays six unverifiable data points on a billboard?
August 9, 2025 at 6:22 AM
ralence.bsky.social
5. Why Tariff Still Dey? Even if country lose small, di business people (producers) wey gain na dem dey shout pass. Dem dey lobby government make dem put tariff. Consumers just quiet even if dem dey suffer. In Summary Small country: Tariff na wahala — consumers lose, producers and government gain small, but di country lose overall. Big country: Tariff fit help small, but e fit cause gbege for trade. Na mix of gain and loss, but ordinary people (buyers) mostly dey suffer pass.
July 15, 2025 at 8:04 AM
ralence.bsky.social
2/3
3. Di Total Effect If you join everything: Producers gain small. Government get small money from tariff. But consumers lose plenty. So di country as a whole lose small welfare because of two bad tins: People no buy enough (consumption drop). People dey produce wey no really make sense (waste resources). Na dis loss dem dey call deadweight loss. 4. If Na Big Country If di country na big country wey fit change world price: E fit use tariff to make foreign goods cheaper (change terms of trade). Sometimes di gain go big pass di loss, so di country fit gain. But e go make other countries vex and dem fit retaliate.
July 15, 2025 at 8:04 AM
ralence.bsky.social
Proof that everything is more fun in pidgin -- a welfare analysis of tariffs, which asks the crucial question, "Why tariff still dey?" 1/3
1. Wetin Be Tariff Tariff na tax wey government put for goods wey dem import from another country. E dey make di price for dat kind good go up for di country wey import am. 2. Who Gain, Who Lose People Wey Dey Involved | Wetin Happen To Dem If Tariff Dey --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- People wey dey buy (Consumers) | Dem lose: Price don high, dem go buy less. People wey dey produce (Producers) | Dem gain: Dem fit sell for higher price, make more money. Government | Dem gain: Dem collect di tariff money.
July 15, 2025 at 8:04 AM
ralence.bsky.social
If you don't mind extracting what you need from a very large data file, I recommend BACI -- a processed version of Comtrade (available back to mid-1990s): www.cepii.fr/CEPII/en/bdd...
BACI provides a unique, reconciled trade flow by implementing an harmonization procedure whose two main ingredients are: 1) CIF costs are estimated and removed from import values to compute FOB import values. 2) The reliability of each country as a reporter of trade data is assessed. If a reporter tends to provide data that are very different from the ones of its partners, it will be considered as unreliable and will be assigned a lower weight in the determination of the reconciled trade flow value.
July 14, 2025 at 1:22 PM
ralence.bsky.social
Good work by the Ghanaian diaspora:
edition.cnn.com/2025/07/11/p...
A federal judge on Friday found that the Department of Homeland Security has been making stops and arrests in Los Angeles immigration raids without probable cause and ordered the department to stop detaining individuals based solely on race, spoken language or occupation. US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ordered that DHS must develop guidance for officers to determine “reasonable suspicion” outside of the apparent race or ethnicity of a person, the language they speak or their accent, “presence at a particular location” such as a bus stop or “the type of work one does.”
July 12, 2025 at 7:48 AM
ralence.bsky.social
It's all over.
Final score: Jasika-Tomic def. Ackman-Sock 6-1, 7-5.
July 9, 2025 at 7:02 PM
ralence.bsky.social
Ackman-Sock drop first set in ATP Newport Challenger in 21 minutes.
July 9, 2025 at 6:17 PM
ralence.bsky.social
It says, "Your tariff has been raised to 25%. Thank you for your consideration."
Gilligan updates the other castaways of the latest developments in US trade policy.
July 7, 2025 at 6:23 PM
ralence.bsky.social
Seems like Depeche Mode was huge at LSE? I thought of this one inspired by early Cure:
Journal article seemingly titled after the Cure song, "Fire in Cairo."
June 26, 2025 at 4:56 PM
ralence.bsky.social
Here is an estimate of the effects of US cuts on my university -- Wits University in Johannesburg. groundup.org.za/article/wits...
Wits has estimated that the funding cuts could reduce its overall research output — measured in publications, clinical trials, and other academic activities — by up to 30%. This will be felt across faculties, with research in health science the most affected. Of the Wits Health Consortium’s grant income of R3.5-billion [roughly $200 million], 42% comes from US government funded agreements.
June 4, 2025 at 7:14 AM
ralence.bsky.social
Alcaraz going full Jailhouse Rock at Roland Garros tonight.
Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock.
May 30, 2025 at 7:01 PM
ralence.bsky.social
"Wait, the tariffs are off?"
Gilligan on his island looking surprised.
May 29, 2025 at 6:24 PM
ralence.bsky.social
Cool! Just bought this baby, and it's going to pay off already.
May 24, 2025 at 6:19 PM
ralence.bsky.social
RIP Mike Peters #TheAlarm
The Alarm "Declaration". Cover of vinyl LP released 1984.
May 3, 2025 at 10:45 AM
ralence.bsky.social
On tonight SA time (GMT +2 hours):

wits-za.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
Overview of the panel and participants.
April 24, 2025 at 8:03 AM
ralence.bsky.social
Lesotho has been making Trump Golf shirts and exporting to the US under AGOA.
Trump Golf shirt labeled "Made in Lesotho"
April 4, 2025 at 1:26 PM
ralence.bsky.social
It appears Trump Golf shirts are made in Lesotho, and so presumably have been imported tariff-free into the US under AGOA.
Trump Golf shirt labeled "Made in Lesotho".
April 4, 2025 at 6:44 AM
ralence.bsky.social
Xichavo Alecia Ndlovu and I show that the democratic advantage is due to political accountability mechanisms -- electoral competitiveness and programmatic political parties -- and it holds in resource-rich and resource-poor countries alike.
Four panels each present simulations of development outcomes under different political regime configurations, based on a statistical analysis of data for sub-Saharan Africa between 1990 and 2019. "Nondemocracy" predicts below-average outcomes on social inclusiveness and economic sustainability. The other three panels depict various democratic regime configurations, and outcomes are consistently above the average. (The scatter of points in each panel reflects the range of uncertainty in our statistical estimates.)
March 9, 2025 at 1:43 PM
ralence.bsky.social
AFAIK there are still no rail links between the two countries. Besides transport costs, product composition/complementarity matters: manufactures and food products are about four times more likely to be traded within Africa than raw materials are.
The graph shows that more than a quarter of Africa's exports of manufactures and food products end up in other African countries, compared with only about a sixteenth of its raw material exports. Overall, intra-regional trade accounts for 12% of Africa's total trade.
December 26, 2024 at 6:22 PM
ralence.bsky.social
I was feeling unfulfilled by studies of Africa's intraregional trade where the punch line is a coefficient for a dummy variable in a gravity model. So I made this Dorling cartogram of 2022 trade flows. Countries are circles proportional to GDP, with recorded trade flows overlaid.
Cartogram of trade flows within Africa for 2022, showing the prominent role of South Africa
December 20, 2024 at 8:04 PM
ralence.bsky.social
I used ternary plots to summarize public perceptions of international organizations in African countries, using Afrobarometer data. They were a nice way to show perceived "helpfulness" and awareness simultaneously: doi.org/10.25159/266... #Africa #DataViz #Afrobarometer
December 19, 2024 at 9:26 PM