December 19, 2018
Joyce Banda Returns Home to Malawi—And Is Still Fighting
Now that JB is back home, what next? She’s running again as the only woman among five major presidential candidates in the May 2019 elections.
Views from the Center
November 19, 2018
“Billions to Trillions” is Not about Africa
It’s time for the MDBs to launch a realistic program for financing African infrastructure—a program that is appropriate for the realities of the region and the urgency of its infrastructure needs, writes Gyude Moore.
November 13, 2018
Are We Learning the Right Energy Lesson from Mobile Phones? The Energy Iceberg Says No
Mobile phones provide a useful insight for energy: not that you can leapfrog a modern power system, but that most energy use happens out of sight. In fact, less than 1% of the energy needed for a smartphone is used by the phone.
November 6, 2018
Uber and Taxify in Africa: Good Work or a Race to the Bottom?
What has the growth of ride-hailing platforms meant for employment in Africa? Taxify claims to have “hundreds of thousands” of drivers across the continent, but exact numbers are hard to come by.
October 26, 2018
In Bringing a Literacy Project to Scale, has Kenya Found a Holy Grail?
An article of faith among development economists is that “evidence-based policy” holds the promise of faster progress. Barbara Bruns set out to find a rigorously evaluated pilot whose evidence had led to a program at scale. It wasn’t easy.
October 15, 2018
Can Africa Show How Gig Workers Get a Fair Share in the Digital Economy?
The digital economy and the gig economy are on a collision course in Africa. For decades, the informal sector has been the engine of employment growth across the continent, with gig work a big part of that.
October 10, 2018
Another Hidden Horror of 21st Century Conflict: Children’s Suffering
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize, awarded last week to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad, calls attention to sexual violence during war and civil conflicts—a horror too often unstated and wished away. There’s another largely hidden horror the world needs to reckon with: the toll that civil conflicts, some so local that they rarely make the news, takes on children.
October 2, 2018
The EU Alliance with Africa: Is It Old Wine in New Bottles?
The Alliance aims to deepen economic relations between the two continents by boosting private investment and trade. The Commission is billing the proposals as a “radical shift” in the EU’s approach to development cooperation in Africa that will take the relationship “to the next level.” Implicit in the sound bites is the EU’s ambition to rival the growing influence of China, whose vast programme of investment on the continent has left other donors scrambling to catch up. But is the Alliance actually anything new? And does it have the potential to reposition the EU as Africa’s leading development partner?
September 28, 2018
Tanzania Outlaws Fact-checking, Seeks World Bank Aid to Create New Facts
Following the playbook of Argentina and Greece, Tanzania has criminalized scrutiny of its economic and social data—creating a quandary for its international creditors.
August 31, 2018
The New UK Partnership with Africa: From Rhetoric to Reality
Prime Minister Theresa May's recent speech in Cape Town may herald an inspiring new Africa-UK development partnership—but only if she can put that vision into action. Ian Mitchell and Hannah Timmis offer lessons from China, France, and the EU.
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