South Africa is said to have had one of the harshest lockdowns in the world. Considering the company we keep that is indeed a harsh appraisal. We also have a baneful distinction, together with countries such as China (and some of the neo-Marxist states of the United States) of having endured one of the most authoritarian regimes. The language of lockdown says all we need to know in that regard. The somewhat secretive composition of the Coronavirus Command Council – until it was a secret no more – whose brief it was to advise, to command, or both, was derived, one may surmise, from the equally secretive KGB, whose authority was based upon no law known to man.

On Friday, the 7th of August, the Electoral Commission of Ghana called a press conference to pat itself on the back for completing the latest in the long line of registration exercises conducted in this country. As if mesmerised by its own achievement, the EC lunged into a series of misguided statistical commentary about the numbers it recorded, in obvious response to critics who argue that the millions of dollars spent on this needless mass registration exercise have mostly been effectively wasted.

To grow in a sustainable fashion, Jordan cannot go on making more of the same. All relevant stakeholders should positively adopt the concept of economic complexity and work on increasing the ranking of the national economy on the ECI.

The 2020 edition of the I-Com Report on energy innovation falls immediately after the most acute phase of an unexpected, if not unpredictable, pandemic. The usual search around energy innovation which, like every year, seeks to broaden and differentiate the spectrum investigative compared to the previous edition, focusing on some innovations that could being paradigmatic (e.g. urban micro mobility) is more difficult than in past. In addition to the usual analysis on research and development, also extended to mobility, inevitably more and more sustainable, we have tried to identify other areas of diffusion impact, such as the combination of energy and digitalization or sector coupling and the accumulation of energy. Alongside these themes, innovations in the way work is carried out and, lastly, an in-depth study of startups, in particular energy ones.