Tag Archives: Development

How to increase your GDP without anyone noticing

African GDP statistics have been in the news recently. Both Ghana and Nigeria in West Africa have seen revisions to their GDP which, in the case of Ghana, has made it a middle income country with per capita GDP, in … Continue reading

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The Potential for Mobile Technology to Improve Agricultural Efficiency

The spread of mobile technology has been transformative in many developing countries. Mobile phones have lowered price dispersion, enabled mobile banking and transfers, and connected an increasing number of people to the internet. Agricultural production in developing countries has been … Continue reading

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Conflict Minerals, Consumers and Industry Lobbying

For years a number of academics and advocacy groups have highlighted the role of minerals in civil wars.  Minerals like tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold often provide rebel groups with a valuable source of finance. For example a number of … Continue reading

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State Capacity in Developing Countries

A state that is able to protect its citizens, enforce property rights and provide public goods acts as the backbone of a functional economy. Researchers call this ability of the state to carry out its objectives ‘state capacity’, and there … Continue reading

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What Schooling Did: The effect of education on the educated, their families and their communities

In the most optimistic view of the world, education is meant to be transformative, changing the fortunes of individuals and their families, and spreading by example to the peers of the educated. While this view accords with the policy rhetoric … Continue reading

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Mobile technologies in Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest levels of infrastructure quality in the world. However, 80% of adults in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal have a mobile phone, despite the fact that a large proportion of them live in poverty with no … Continue reading

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The reverse couch potato effect: the impact of inspirational movies on aspirations and expectations

Documentary screening, iiG Programme (DFID funded) (Owner: Kate Orkin) – Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).Link to Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/   Do people believe that they are in control of their future outcomes? And how do expectations of what can … Continue reading

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Property rights in diverse places: lessons from Dar es Salaam

  Last year, while wandering around a slum in Dar es Salaam with a colleague,  I happened upon a local landowner who was visibly displeased with how his plot had been demarcated in a recent large-scale land survey. A few … Continue reading

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Fungibility and off-budget aid

If you’ve been following development blogs for a few years, you probably remember The Great Fungibility Debate of 2010 that was sparked by a paper in the Lancet written by researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. To … Continue reading

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Does conflict affect political engagement in Africa?

Last Tuesday, as part of CSAE’s weekly seminar series, James Fenske presented his new working paper on ‘War, Resilience and Political Engagement in Africa’ (co-authored with Achyuta Adhvaryu) in which they test whether early-life war exposure influences later-life political engagement … Continue reading

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