The Flat Earth Society scores an own goal. ht Giles Paley-Phillips After huge controversy over fiddling the numbers to avoid antagonising powerful countries like China, the World Bank scrapped its Doing Business report. But even without the corruption, its methodology always felt dodgy – more ‘how much does country X resemble the American dream’, with a focus on low taxation/regulation

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Nicola Nixon, Stefaan Verhulst, Imran Matin & Philips J. Vermonte explore a really interesting initiative to crowdsource the most important current issues on the governance agenda. Late last year, we – the Governance Lab at NYU, the CSIS Indonesia, the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development, Bangladesh and The Asia Foundation – joined forces across New York, Jakarta, Dhaka, Hanoi,

UK aid a year after the abolition of DFID: ‘One year in, our fears have materialized. The FCDO has veered away from a poverty focus, its commitment to development effectiveness has waned, and its expertise has been heavily diluted.’ What will be the likely effects of reducing the UK’s aid budget? Damning round-up of what we know so far from

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Two short pieces give us the next flavour of on the ground research in the DRC, reposted from the Bukavu Series. First, Eric Batumike Banyanga on ‘When an Armed Guide is Imposed on You: Navigating Research in a Conflict Zone’. Introduction to the Bukavu series here. Search on ‘Bukavu’ for the other posts in the series or see list at end

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Next up in this series of posts from the Bukavu workshops, we get into the nuts and bolts of the power differentials within the research ‘supply chain’, with Judith Nshobole. Introduction to the Bukavu series here. Search on ‘Bukavu’ for the other posts in the series. Original post here. Power imbalances between “donor-researchers” and “recipient-researchers” at the outset of a

Next up in this series of posts from the Bukavu workshops, Jérémie Mapatano Byakumbwa  discusses some messy issues that face many researchers. Original post here. In my own experience as a researcher in eastern DRC, there have been numerous occasions on which I have had to deal with explicit demands for money (or for some sort of tip) from my

There’s a lot of attention on this blog to localizing aid (increasing the power and resources in the hands of local organizations rather than white men in shorts), but what about localization of research? For the next few weeks, I am largely handing over the blog to the Bukavu Series, a set of blog posts (and now a book) written

Some fine gallows humour from Naila Kabeer. ‘Clearly the Taliban have not caught up with the feminist critique of ‘manels’.’ Anyone care to add the David Hasselhof meme? How did Covid-19 affect women’s autonomy & access to healthcare in Pakistan? From 2020 to 2021, as a car crash. Ht Josh Warburton This is Nuts. ‘Europe receiving 10M COVID-19 vaccine doses

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