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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

Guest post by Lavinia Tyrrel, Linda Kelly, Chris Roche and Elisabeth Jackson In Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez plays on the themes of love and passion, comparing them to a plague like cholera. Referring to the two lovers in the story he notes “…if they had learned anything together, it was that wisdom comes to us

ICYMI, put this wonderful post by Robert Chambers up yesterday afternoon. Humour, Postcolonial Irony and Covid-19 in Africa, by David Mwambari and Laura S Martin Serious about shifting norms as a pathway to change? Why Sesame Street Was a Revolutionary Force for Children’s Television ht Ranil Dissayanake What if some African governments are doing a better job than our own

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

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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. Claire Melamed, CEO of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. Most of the time data is a boring backdrop to the real stuff that people care about: will my child get into university with those grades? Which party is likely to win at the next election? Who will win the World Cup? Most people are

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

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