Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of diaries as a research tool into issues such as governance and finance. Here Sandrine N’simire, Ishara Tchumisi and Patricia Stys, of LSE’s Centre for Public Authority in International Development, discuss their experiences conducting research using ‘financial diaries’ as part of LSE’s Water Governance project in Goma, DRC. This blog forms part of the Idjwi

Larissa Pelham, Oxfam’s Social Protection Adviser, reports back on a 4 day Zoomathon Covid-19 has catapulted social protection into the spotlight.  From furloughing to school feeding programmes delivered to homes, 212 states and territories across the world have planned or delivered 1179 social protection interventions in response to the pandemic.  It is the backbone support to families and individuals to

This week’s Economist Special Report on the World Economy is a thought-provoking and beautifully written helicopter overview of the current meltdown. Some extracts: ‘Conditions before the pandemic were forged by the three biggest economic shocks of the 21st century: the integration of China into the world trading system, the financial crisis and the rise of the digital economy. As Chinese

Organizing (along with James Putzel) the LSE’s guest lecture series on ‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking and Practice’ has turned out to be one of the few genuine silver linings in the Covid cloud. Because we’ve had to move to fully online, we’ve been able to get some of the world’s most interesting thinkers to speak to us from

Why don’t more mainstream aid organizations work on the issue of illegal drugs like cannabis, coca or opium poppy? We’ve known for decades that the prevalent approach to these – prohibition – harms small-scale farmers that grow them, fuels violence, undermines the rule of law and contaminates politics (the UN estimates the illegal drugs trade is worth $500bn a year

Guest post by Save the Children International’s Melissa Burgess and Michael O’Donnell The world is certainly not lacking in research on COVID-19. But there have been gaps in empirical data showing the lived experience of people around the world. Today, Save the Children is filling some of those gaps with the release of the findings from an unprecedented study, asking

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

Sabina Alkire presents the headlines from the latest Multi-Dimensional Poverty report Poverty is not just about income – dollars per day. It includes indicators on poor health, education, housing and more (see graphic). For the last ten years, we’ve been measuring this more nuanced multi-dimensional poverty – here’s what we’ve found. At least 1.3 billion out of 5.9 billion people

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Marcus Rashford’s campaign to get an extension of free school meal vouchers for 1.3m kids during the summer holiday. And I’m glad he got the UK government to reverse its position. But what does it say about that government when, on the same day it performed a U-turn on welfare policy

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

As part of their Masters in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies, LSE students do a consultancy for aid agencies and others. Here Chiara Jachia, Natalie Schwarz, Hanna Toda and Anjuman Tanha discuss the Covid implications of their consultancy on Informal Social Protection. Oxfam’s Larissa Pelham (contact larissa.pelham[at]oxfam.org if you want to know more about its work) introduces their project: ‘Informal

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