A CGD blog. It’s Davos week, so I just checked… and I qualify for writing a global “we are the 99 percent” blog! Indeed, my household is actually all the way toward the bottom end of the 99th income percentile worldwide (the lower cutoff is around $200,000 for a family of four). So, what do…

A CGD blog with Euan Ritchie. In the international development community, “country ownership” is considered a good thing, while criticisims of foreign aid are based on the idea that this is the problem. But only about a third of assistance is actually managed by those it is intended to help.

A CGD blog. The idea that shavings of public gold sprinkled like fairy dust on private investment projects would bring to life a giant array of infrastructure and services which in turn would gift us wondrous progress in development hasn’t worked out. It is time to drop the fantasy and focus instead on the test…

A CGD blog. On March 14-15th, the US National Academies hosted a discussion on Africa-US science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) university partnerships, as part of an effort to design a new partnership mechanism. The program opened with representatives from African institutions talking about their ex…

A CGD blog. Chinese construction firms have captured a lot of the market in many developing countries and perhaps especially in African countries. By one estimate, they accounted for 31 percent of all construction projects in Africa with a value of $50m or more in 2020.

A CGD blog with Amanda Glassman. The reaction to COVID-19 has been record-breaking. Today we release a paper that reports on the development and rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in historical perspective, and it suggests a pattern of unparalleled, but still deeply inequitable, progress.

A CGD blog. We look at the challenges that Europe faces with an aging population, and ask if the challenges that Africa faces with a burgeoning working-age population might be a mutually beneficial part of the answer. We think they might, but the scale of migration under “business as usual” is grossly…

A CGD blog. The Updated International Health Regulations Need Better Rules for Travel Restrictions

A CGD blog with Scott Morris. While hopes for mobilizing private finance for climate response were boosted by the investment firms managing a collective $130 trillion who signed onto net zero pledges at the COP, actually getting the private trillions to move south remains a huge challenge. And two leading proposals point to the …

A CGD blog. The world’s poorest countries-those classified as low- and lower-middle-income-contribute just one seventh of global emissions despite being home to half of the global population. A just solution to these countries’ dual challenges of climate change and development should be a central concern of the…