Last up in this short series of ’emergent agency’ case studies from the Interface Journal. María Jose Ventura Alfaro describes how independent feminist collectives in Mexico have created solidarity networks across the country to tackle the gravest socioeconomic consequences of the virus at the local level: shortages of food, medicine, and other essential products and an upsurge in domestic and

Hongwei Bao argues that rather than seeing the pandemic as an obstacle to social movements, it can be a good opportunity to experiment with flexible and creative modes of social and political activism. This piece is a shortened version of a paper in the Interface Journal. From January to April, many Chinese cities including Wuhan were locked down in a

We’ve had an amazing response to our launch of the project on ‘Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid‘, and are now processing all the contacts and info we’ve received. For those wanting examples of the kinds of experiences we are interested in, I’ll be posting some examples over the next few days. First up, Sobhi Mohanty argues that the

Suchi Pande is a scholar in residence at the Accountability Research Center, Washington DC This post discusses two development policies that sound technical, but which are really important. Social protection is the set of services that help protect people against economic shocks or disasters, and from the ups-and-downs all people face in their life-cycle. Social audits are organized by citizens

Guest post by Hannah Ryder, CEO of Development Reimagined, and former head of partnerships for UNDP China What do the governments of countries like Cameroon or Cambodia really think of Chinese aid and loans? It’s a question few commentators and funders ask, and even fewer are interested in helping respond to the challenges they raise. Instead, the focus is typically

Priyanka Kotamraju (@peekayty ) introduces the Local Diaries: Untold Stories of Women podcast. She is an editor in the Chitrakoot Collective and an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity. Sadrunissa is a young woman from Varanasi in northern India whose dreams abruptly faded in the wake of COVID-19. In January, she joined a tailoring course. It was the first time Sadrunissa had

This is a shortened and slightly updated version of a post by Alcinda Honwana and Nyeleti Honwana, which first appeared on the SSRC’s Kujenga Amani blog The African continent has, thus far, fared comparatively well in the pandemic, with just under 400,000 confirmed infections and about 10,000 fatalities at the end of June 2020. Even so, the heavy economic, social, and emotional

Nic Cheeseman and Golden Matonga explore the factors behind a remarkable political breakthrough in Malawi In June 2019, Malawi’s democracy appeared to be in decline. President Peter Mutharika had just been declared the official winner of controversial presidential polls that were denounced by opposition parties and civil society groups. Mass protests regularly brought urban areas to a standstill but failed

I recently skyped Deepak Nayyar, Professor of Economics at India’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to discuss his new book, Resurgent Asia You start with an economist called Gunnar Myrdal, who 50 years ago wrote a book saying that Asia was doomed! Myrdal had a European perspective of Asia, with almost no history. For him, Asia began really at the end of

‘White saviour complex’, ‘poverty porn’, ‘locals’ vs. ‘expats’. These terms are all part of an old conversation that has revived as a result of the mass protests calling for racial justice and anti-racism across the US and globally. Racism in development and aid is not a new issue, so why does it continue to be overlooked? Sadly, I’ve noticed a notable silence from

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Last week I sat down with Danny Sriskandarajah, who is leading Oxfam GB through its current upheaval. Here are some extracts, but do please listen to the full 25 minutes if you can. So Danny, you’re a year and a half into the job. People will have been watching with interest as you came in as a surprise choice –