
January 30, 2025
Millions of women in the Global South earn a pittance, own no wealth or land and do far more unpaid care than men – and much of their condition today can be traced back to the economic devastation caused by both colonialism and the extractive economic system it created. That’s why any plan for redress must include justice for women. In the latest blog in our World Economic Forum series, Lurit Yugusuk and Hazel Birungi set out five ways to do that…
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Want to tackle inequality? Start with fair taxes and giving the Global South a real voice at the IMF and World Bank
January 22, 2025
Global inequality will continue to spiral in a skewed system of international finance and governance that heavily favours the Global North, says Anthony Kamande in the latest blog in our Davos series.
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Who wants to be a trillionaire? How Oxfam worked out five men could win the ultimate wealth prize
January 21, 2025
Alex Maitland takes us through the number-crunching behind the headline prediction from this year’s Davos report: that there will be five trillionaires within a decade.
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Get ready for the new trillionaire class: whose wealth will be built not on merit but inheritance, monopoly – and the legacy of colonialism
January 20, 2025
The world looks set to see five trillionaires within a decade — and more billionaires are now being created through inheritance than entrepreneurialism. Anjela Taneja and Harry Bignell introduce Oxfam’s 2025 Davos report, which reveals the scale of unearned wealth — and how those riches are built on a colonial legacy of exploitative global systems.
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How billionaire ‘pollutocrats’ are driving our climate crisis – and what we can do about it
October 31, 2024
If everyone used private jets and superyachts like 50 of the world’s richest billionaires, the remaining carbon budget to stay within 1.5C would be burned up in just two days. Nafkote Dabi introduces Oxfam’s new climate report, which spells out how the emissions of the super-rich are driving inequality, hunger and heat-related deaths.
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Governments across the globe are giving up on the fight against inequality: here’s what they should do instead…
October 23, 2024
New Oxfam analysis shows global Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) has just hit a new low. Anthony Kamande shares insights from Oxfam’s biannual CRI report that ranks 164 countries’ policies – and offers three big policy changes that should be firmly on the agenda at this week’s World Bank/IMF annual meetings.
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Why is inequality so sticky? The political obstacles to a fairer economy
June 6, 2024
Theory tells us that democracies should become more equal. So why are they still so unequal? Gideon Coolin, Emanuele Sapienza, and Andy Sumner on their new UNDP paper that unpicks the politics of inequality.
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In praise of…. Logframes
August 5, 2021
Guest post from Graham Teskey My friend and colleague Lavinia Tyrell recently posted a note on LinkedIn, highlighting a recent WB Independent Evaluation Group report, which reflected on various methods of monitoring and evaluation currently used in development. In so doing, Lavinia referenced this diagram: As a fan of diagrams, as well as a long-time user of both the London
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What’s New in the Private Education Pandora’s Box? A look at developments in the Global South
April 23, 2019
Guest post from Prachi Srivastava, Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario. The Economist’s new special report ‘Private education’ (print edition, 13 April 2019) is causing a stir. We’ve been here before. Nearly four years ago, The Economist did a cover story (‘The $1-a-week school’) and briefing (‘Learning unleashed’) on low-fee private schooling (print edition, 1 August 2015) which caused a similar controversy. Then
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The ‘Black Market’ of Knowledge Production
April 2, 2019
Researchers David Mwambari and Arthur Owor question the effect of money in producing knowledge in post-conflict contexts and argue that it restricts independent local research. These insights were developed at a recent workshop at Ghent University, which brought together Ghent-based researchers and a group of researchers, commonly called “research assistants”, from post-conflict and developing regions. In order to support more informed
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Don’t get the hump, but what really changed on global income, and what didn’t?
March 29, 2019
I was wondering when that phrase would appear….. Andy Sumner & Kathleen Craig of the King’s Department of International Development continue the humpology debate. Duncan’s blog on the global hump and Jose Manuel Roche’s reply raise the question of what has actually changed and what hasn’t. Here’s (yet) another take and in an attempt to be less geeky and more narrative-based,
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Doing the hard stuff in tough places: please help us find the ‘seemingly impossible’ stories of success
March 28, 2019
Guest post from Grace Lyn Higdon, Irene Guijt and Ruth Mayne The list of reasons to feel depressed is long and growing. Recent elections ushering in sexist and violent heads of states; climate change even worse than predicted; backlash to #MeToo and, if you’re in the UK, the political swamp known as ‘Brexit’. Depressing – and urgent. When it comes to
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