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This was the title for my first experience of Zoom-chairing last week, in a panel hosted by the LSE’s Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa. The star-studded panel comprised Degan Ali, Alex de Waal, Kiran Jobanputra and Vanessa Moungar. They were all great, and you can enjoy the full 80m video here, but to give you a flavour, I’ve skimmed through the

I wrote this with guest bloggers Jane Lonsdale and Rosita Armytage – I’m an adviser to their governance project in Myanmar, which provides the subject matter for this post. The Coronavirus has provided the perfect natural experiment, buffeting aid programmes of every stripe and testing their ability to respond. Here’s some views directly from an Adaptive Management programme, Myanmar’s Centre

Guest post by Dr. Claire Melamed, CEO of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. Most of the time data is a boring backdrop to the real stuff that people care about: will my child get into university with those grades? Which party is likely to win at the next election? Who will win the World Cup? Most people are

Guest post by Oxfam’s Amber Parkes, Anam Parvez and Dana Stefov There’s no ‘pause’ button for care The Coronavirus is highlighting just how essential care work is to our economy, health and survival. The idea that we are in an economic ‘shutdown’ is a misnomer. Huge amounts of unpaid care work are forcing many (mainly women) to work overtime at home

Adejoke Adeboyejo is a freelance writer based in Lagos, Nigeria. She writes about healthcare, women and other development issues. Since the coronavirus pandemic began, conspiracy theories have flourished and spread like the virus itself. Some believe the virus is bioengineered, while others say the pandemic is a conspiracy of big pharmaceutical companies or a plot hatched by Bill Gates. A

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Pablo Suarez discusses the role of humour in driving change, and introduces today’s Corona-cartoon Competition Why cartoons in the midst of a pandemic? Humor keeps us honest. It helps bridge the gap between what is and what could be. The argument is simple: by overlooking reality, people and organizations often fail to anticipate and address risks, and humor helps to

It’s Friday and weeks in lockdown can be loooong. Time for some fun. We had a lot of it with last month’s Coronavision Song Contest (Bobi Wine just about won that one, thanks to all his Ugandan fans), so to accompany Pablo Suarez’ piece today on the use of humour, it’s time for …[drum roll]… the Corona-Cartoon Competition! Here’s a

I’ve been thinking about feedback in terms of the way Covid is playing out on the ground. Or rather, the lack of it. Lockdown interrupts/diminishes the flow of information from the ground to governments. Decision makers, be they politicians or senior officials, can’t send out researchers or underlings to find out what’s going on in the villages, cities and shanty

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I’m a huge fan of the work of Saskia Brechenmacher and Thomas Carothers at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who regularly contribute brilliant pieces like this one to FP2P on issues of democracy and civil society. They (along with Richard Youngs) have just published a really useful survey of the impact of Covid-19 on civil society worldwide, drawing on