Guest post by Gopa Thampi and Nicola Nixon of The Asia Foundation Why is the much-heralded promise of the data revolution not accelerating development in the way we expected? Why is the incredibly rapid rise of new data sources and methods of analysis paradoxically out of sync with its broader social impacts? No easy answers, but some of the reasons,

This brilliant post by George Kibala Bauer was first published on the Africa is a Country blog We all know the feeling—we read an article by a Western pundit, or listen to a broad-brushing intervention on everything that is wrong with Africa, and we feel the need to put the Westerner and their underlying worldview in their place. We have

The Covid pandemic is bound to be a game-changing critical juncture for some issues in some places – maybe in all places, who knows. But what kind of transformations and how soon will we know? The problem with detecting these kinds of ‘weak signals’ is that our heads and organizations are already full of noise – especially the noise of

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Guest post by Sally Torbert of the International Budget Partnership, who has a very different take on how to tackle Covid Corruption from yesterday’s post by Mushtaq Khan and Pallavi Roy Vast sums of public money are being mobilized and diverted to fund COVID-19 emergency measures. Governments need to identify, approve, and implement emergency funding urgently. While speed does not

Guest post by Mushtaq Khan and Pallavi Roy of the SOAS Anti-Corruption Evidence Consortium (SOAS-ACE) Why the COVID-19 response is undermined by corruption ‘Flattening the curve’ and lockdowns have sadly become part of our new vocabulary. That this is not just about limiting patient numbers temporarily but primarily about using the opportunity to scale up COVID-19 testing and treatment capacities

And the overall winner of our Corona Cartoon competition is….. the unknown creator of Zoom Last Supper – anyone know who we should be congratulating? It was tight though – Last Supper got 46% and ‘turn it on and turn it off again’ got 42%. Some Podcast news: My #PowerShifts colleague Maria Faciolince is starting a new #PowerInThePandemic series. Check

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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. Olive Kobusingye In managing the pandemic, Uganda seems to have checked many of the right boxes so far. Schools were closed, large gatherings banned, and some form of physical distancing adopted before Uganda registered its first case of COVID 19. The sole international airport was closed on March 23, 2020, a day after the first case

This blog’s #PowerShifts project is now on Instagram Debt crisis update: The Economist’s table of 4 risk factors in 66 developing countries. Highest combined risk = Venezuela, Lebanon, Zambia, Bahrain, Angola. The Economic Impact of COVID-19 around the World. Excellent round up of the latest analysis from David Evans (aka the Great Summarizer) and Amina Mendez Acosta Tanzania’s gamble: ‘In contrast to