Beyond excited to host a development hero, Jean Drèze, on the blog. He introduces some new research showing that in India, the prolonged closure of schools has taken a heavy toll. A sound strategy to deal with this crisis is nowhere in sight. Indian children have been “locked out” of school for almost a year and a half. This lockout,

Powerful piece in this week’s Economist. I’ve added links to the various pieces of research it cites ‘Seventeen months into the COVID-19 pandemic, plenty of questions about the catastrophe remain unanswered. It is still unclear how SARS-COV-2 originated, for instance. Another puzzle is why some areas have had less destructive epidemics than others. Why has Florida had fewer deaths per person from

I took part in a fun podcast recently on ‘water for development’. I was in the company of some people who actually know about the subject (Michael Wilson, Rosie Wheen, Melita Grant and Rachel Mason Nunn). I was playing my favourite role in this final wrap-up conversation of a series of discussions, that of informed ignoramus burbling on about how

Guest post from Derek Thorne Back in 2015, Duncan Green published a piece on FP2P asking whether a TripAdvisor-style feedback system could work in development. If you follow the link, you’ll see it generated a lot of feedback! The idea was – and is – that TripAdvisor, and systems like it, have put significant power in the hands of consumers,

WaterAid’s Tseguereda Abraham, Hossain Ishrath Adib and John Garrett introduce its new report. Why invest in water, sanitation and hygiene? Most schoolchildren would need only a few seconds to find an answer. Of course, water and sanitation are human rights, and hygiene has a vital role in preventing infectious disease, as COVID-19 has highlighted all too clearly. So why is

Nikki van der Gaag reflects on the state of dad-dom ahead of fathers’ day on Sunday. She is a co-author of this year’s State of the World’s Fathers report One thing is certain in these uncertain times. Being a father has changed. I have never seen so many dads out with their children as I did when I walked in

Some really important number crunching in The Economist this week. They have built an estimate of the number of ‘excess deaths’ worldwide – that is mortality above the pre-Covid average. This gives you a more accurate picture of how many people have died, because so many Covid deaths are not recorded as pandemic-related (whether because of weak stats systems, or

In my third post on the impact of researchers at the LSE Centre for Public Authority and International Development, I talk to CPAID’s Melissa Parker about her ground-breaking work on Sierra Leone’s Ebola outbreak and how it helped her bring the ‘public authority’ lens into policy-making. When you send in the anthropologists, be ready for surprises – totally new players,

Bens Ramalingam and Kumpf have a thought-provoking new paper out on Covid-linked innovation in poor countries, and the lessons for aid donors. Here are some highlights, and a minor rant it inspired in me. The paper documents a range of fascinating innovations. Here’s a flavour: ‘Problem: A health official in a large city in India is tasked with sourcing quality

Guest post by water policy consultant Henry Northover (twitter: @Henrynorthover) I’ve sat through too many presentations in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector that end with the neat conclusion: “all that’s needed is greater political will”.  Thank you and goodnight!  And this comes from a sector that’s pretty well-served by high level statements of political commitment.  The AU has

The Emerging Agency in a Time of Covid project is buzzing along nicely. Today (12.30pm, London time, 6th April) Niranjan Nampoothiri will summarize his findings from sorting, summarizing and coding the 200 cases for the project database. Register here. Headline findings here. We had a stocktake webinar recently looking for common patterns from a burgeoning set of discussion groups on

Charles Kenny is a wonderfully fluent and accessible writer. He’s also quick, judging by his latest book, The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease. Here’s how it opens: ‘The two leading killers worldwide at the start of the twenty-first century are heart attacks and strokes. That is evidence of humanity’s greatest triumph: until recent decades, most