Inflation: Africa’s Tax Without a Tax Bill

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Oluwaseun Adeoye Oyebamiji

“The most accessible measure of inflation in most African states, especially in Nigeria, is not a bulletin but a chalkboard. In markets across the country, sellers write prices in chalk rather than paint, because paint assumes tomorrow will resemble today. A trader repricing her stock weekly is not being opportunistic. She is doing arithmetic the currency forces on her. Inflation is usually discussed here as a cost-of-living problem, which it is, and rarely as an information problem, which it also is. A price is how an economy signals what is scarce. When the general price level moves quickly and unevenly, that signal becomes unreadable. A manufacturer cannot tell whether his input costs rose because the material became scarcer, in which case he should substitute, or because money lost value, in which case he should not.” (09/24/26)

https://mises.org/power-market/inflation-africas-tax-without-tax-bill