Independent research for global prosperity
Lawrence MacDonald, CGD vice president for communications and policy outreach, interviews a CGD expert in this weekly Podcast. The blog offers a short text summary.
Imagine that a government employee holding an unfamiliar device and a laptop offers to scan your iris and create for you a unique identification record. Would you agree? For hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, the answer is unequivocally “yes!” My guests on this Wonkcast are among the world’s leading experts on the burgeoning field of biometric identification and its role in development.
Being able to prove who you are is a powerful tool that can serve as a basis for exercising rights like voting, accessing financial services and receiving transfers, and reducing fraud. Yet billions of people in the developing world lack a means to officially identify themselves. In this week’s Wonkcast, Alan Gelb and Julia Clark draw from their ongoing research on biometric technology and development to explain how developing country governments and donors can tap advances in biometrics to help empower poor people.
The Wonkcast is taking a brief summer vacation. We’ve selected this show from our archives- it was originally posted on June 1, 2010.
The Wonkcast is taking a brief summer vacation. We’ve selected this show from our archives- it was originally posted on June 1, 2010.
Has technology boosted the ability of citizens in African countries to influence their governments? This week, I'm joined by Rakesh Rajani, founder and head of Twaweza, an initiative that promotes transparency and accountability in Tanzania and other countries in East Africa.
Congratulations to Sweden for ranking first in CGD’s 2009 Commitment to Development Index (CDI) for the first time since the creation of the Index in 2003. The United States, meanwhile, manages only a meager 17th place among the 22 wealthy countries ranked.