By freely sharing what we learn, we have built a reputation as thought leaders who translate ideas into action and action into results. You can browse through recently published articles from all our publications ( Developments, Developing Alternatives, [email protected] ) below—or visit individual publication sites for a full archive.
Digital
The Pacific Islands have the lowest rate of mobile internet penetration in the world and fixed broadband connection levels far below that of their neighbors. Recent and planned investments in building out undersea fiber optic cable and satellite services—including those financed by the United Nations, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank—are s…
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Despite their proximity, South and Central Asia are among the least economically integrated regions. Intraregional trade is estimated to be between 0.2 and 4 percent of their total trade to all destinations—significantly below regional trade in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Most of the countries in the two regions h…
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Tech ethics have continued to claim the public spotlight as more accounts of bias and harm due to technology and artificial intelligence (AI) have appeared in the media. Stories from racial bias in health care algorithms to gender bias in hiring algorithms have uncovered the lack of neutrality in technology that has previously been assumed to be…
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In the course of the latest conflict between Israel and Palestinian factions in Gaza, one of the Gaza Strip’s brightest beacons of promise was almost extinguished. The $11.2 million Solar Gaza Project—funded by the World Bank Group and financed through the Palestinian Ministry of Finance’s Finance for Jobs (F4J) program—lost approximately 5,000 …
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Kate Heuisler recently spoke with Voneat Pen, the Chapter Ambassador for Technovation in Cambodia, about her work growing the successful all-girl tech entrepreneurship education program for the seventh year in a row. While juggling her roles as the co-founder of the tech startup 606, a programmer, and STEM advocate, Voneat has been instrumental …
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I am sure many of you have come across a map like the one below. I find that images of our planet are always awe-inspiring and this image is certainly not an exception. I can easily get lost in satellite imagery for hours if I am not careful. Most of those images are based on visual spectrum optical technology (LandSAT, Sentinel, etc.), thus req…
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With the departure of U.S. forces from Afghanistan scheduled for this fall, all eyes are turning to the peace process, and in particular the place of women’s rights in those negotiations. With those rights in mind, we spoke to Sara Seerat, a leading women’s rights activist recently appointed by presidential decree as Senior Advisor to the High C…
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Ian Cocroft, Karen Lee, and Connor MacKenzie are second-year master’s students in the international development program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The SAIS International Development (IDEV) practicum allows students to work directly with public, private, and nongovernmental organizations as a …
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Fast Company magazine has been around for decades…but is it relevant for digital development work? The publication was founded in 1995 at a time when business was changing the world in new ways. Today, 26 years later, we are still coming to terms with the ways that technologies are transforming the ways we work and live—especially during the COV…
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We’ve all heard the adage that “disease does not discriminate.” The reality is very different. The current pandemic has, in fact, shone a light on stark health inequalities around the world. The consequences of COVID-19 are experienced differently by people depending on their circumstances, whether they are in North America, Europe, Asia, or in …
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Who owns the device you are reading this blog post on? It may seem like a straightforward question until a power surge fries a key circuit or a stray elbow knocks a unit to the floor. At this point, the process of repairing what you thought was your (or your employer’s) property is likely to get a bit more complicated: The device turns out to be…
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The stemazone initiative for Omani youth, funded by Eshraqa and designed and implemented by DAI, has launched in Oman. The innovative educational initiative is focused on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) for Omanis aged 7 to 15. Through the Sustainable Business Group and Center for Digital Acceleration, DAI partnered with…
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This article is the first in a series that explores the relationship between competitiveness and sustainability through a new lens that seeks to account for the use and abuse of natural capital. In this series—titled The Nature of Competitiveness: a New Worldview for Corporate Sustainability—we endeavor to identify solutions such as new business…
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Before joining DAI’s Center for Digital Acceleration (CDA), I worked in the software development industry. For the majority of my 15 years in this field, I only worked for tech companies whose main business model was building software. To successfully build software, there are multiple practices and skills that companies need. These skills are, …
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Despite the incredible progress made over the last decade by the U.S. Government’s global hunger and food security Feed the Future program, continued shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic, make the work towards a more resilient global population and improved food security more relevant than ever. COVID’s impact on food security continues to be…
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DAI’s Digital Frontiers Project, in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Indo-Pacific Office, recently hosted a thought-provoking webinar featuring views from the field in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal on opportunities and challenges for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and women entrepreneurs in South…
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As part of last year’s launch events for the DAI Center for Digital Acceleration’s flagship Frontier Insights research on user perceptions of trust and privacy on the internet, two panels of experts helped underscore and widen the discussion around issues raised in the report. In the South Asia panel, a theme that emerged very clearly was the ur…
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March 30 marked one year since the Government of Zimbabwe declared the country’s first nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. The strict lockdown and enforcement measures have caused significant hardship for most citizens, but particularly for informal traders in poorer urban areas and communities that depend on agriculture for thei…
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A government that citizens can trust with their hard-earned wages. A government that ensures its citizens feel their voices are heard. A government whose priorities reflect its citizens’ aspirations. Such a government is the bedrock of any nation. Yet far too many governments fall short of this goal. Seeking to support good governance specifical…
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As we head into “event season”—albeit remotely—I’ve been thinking about how we share knowledge about what we do in the ICT4D space. In doing some recent research and sector mapping, I noted how different the levels of ICT4D development are amongst various sectors. In digital agriculture, it is generally accepted that there are numerous innovatio…
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The next 10 years are make-or-break for our climate. To limit the rise in global temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius, we must achieve significant progress on emissions reductions by 2030. At the same time, as a global community, we must ensure that the expedited transition to a low-carbon economy is not only rapid but fair, with no one le…
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The way we measure the success of a company has to change—and is changing. That was the message of the Dasgupta Review, a landmark study that confirms the paradigm shift we have all suspected for some time. The 600-page Dasgupta Review (the Review)—led by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta and commissioned, tellingly, not by an environmental agency b…
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Donald Lunan, DAI’s new Global Director for Climate, has worked at DAI since 2005. As head of the Climate and Environment team in the United Kingdom, he worked with governments, the private sector, and civil society to address climate and natural resource challenges. More recently, he led the Delivery Team for the U.K. Business Unit, overseeing …
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We can bemoan the amount of finance committed to mitigate and adapt to climate change in the developing world. But the sobering truth is that even the funding we currently have in the pipeline is not getting from upstream lenders and funders to downstream users where it really matters—that is, to the small enterprises, agribusinesses, and manufa…
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Through a combination of laser-focused tactical interventions and support for rapid trade policy reform, the Afghanistan Value Chains-High Value Crops (AVC-HVC) project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is enabling the Afghan government to address longstanding trade policy and trade logistics challenges, which for…
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DAI is searching for experienced organizations to offer strategic communications support to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Digital Frontiers mechanism. Digital Frontiers works with different USAID Missions and Bureaus in 37 countries. Its activities include: testing approaches to closing the gender digital divi…
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Mexico is facing numerous challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic and, simultaneously, a historically high burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including some of the highest prevalence rates of hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. People with underlying chronic health conditions have a higher risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms or dying …
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Agile methodology has been a trending topic for a while now and it typically describes a wide range of approaches to software development, project management, and even raising children. Everyone loves to say they work on an agile team or to describe their company as an agile organization. While it’s true that its widespread use has changed the w…
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Southeast Asia is one of the world’s fastest-growing regions for digital connectivity. Thai people, for example, spend on average nine hours a day using the internet on their mobile phones. That’s the second highest in the world! And 95 percent of all Thais connected to the internet use Facebook.
We have all heard about the dangers that come w…
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With 16- to 29-year-olds making up a quarter of El Salvador’s population, young people have the potential to play a transformative role in the country’s labor market and contribute to economic prosperity in this Central American country, where economic growth has exceeded 3 percent only twice this century. Yet many young Salvadorans—confronted b…
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For some professions, the past year has normalized virtual interactions and digital collaboration. While many jobs and activities still require in-person interaction, others have moved online as much as possible. Conferences are virtual. Weekly meetings take place through a screen. And classrooms have gone online. Most people who have engaged wi…
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COVID-19 has disrupted the way industries operate globally. Remaining commercially viable in the face of supply and demand shocks, while safeguarding workers, has been challenging for all businesses. In the low- and middle-income countries where DAI operates, the situation is even more severe because the reach of public emergency support to busi…
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With March being Women’s History Month, it feels appropriate to reflect on progress made towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal No. 5: Achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. Over the years, development programs have made significant strides in recognizing and alleviating the inequality that exists between…
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Since the early 2000s, the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), home to more than 30 million citizens in northwest Pakistan, has suffered from the effects of militancy and natural disasters. Taliban attacks from neighbouring Afghanistan and severe droughts and floods have displaced people, increased poverty, hindered access to basic services, an…
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I find it difficult to use the word in this context, but there may be one positive—if not collateral—effect of COVID-19: after the decades of support the digital development community has provided to businesses and consumers around the world to help, the adoption of digital technologies has accelerated in mere months. There’s a new willingness t…
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Many donors, governments, and corporations have recognized the need to assist small businesses and entrepreneurs amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, but another group—entrepreneurship support organizations (ESOs), which help those same small firms—are also suffering from a lull in funding and assistance. In recognition of this knowledge and funding ga…
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Once a major agricultural exporter with robust export industries in coffee and sugarcane, Haiti now accounts for a minuscule share of global exports for virtually all agricultural commodities—around 0.1 percent to 0.4 percent. Yet, strengthening agricultural exports—including cacao, the seed from which cocoa products are made—has long been held …
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COVID-19 infections in Uganda are rising fast. The country recorded its first case of the coronavirus in March 2020 and in the early stages of the pandemic most cases were identified at the borders, among people travelling from other countries. Since then, however, the country has seen a rapid increase in community transmission and clusters of i…
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Sharing borders with four European Union (EU) member states—Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia—Ukraine is now a participant in the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Eastern Partnership, and thus a priority partner of the EU. Yet the ratification of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, begun in 2012 and concluded five years later, turned…
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Companies are increasingly required to demonstrate the socioeconomic value of projects to gain operating approval from national governments, secure capital from investors and financiers, or uphold their brands in the court of public and consumer opinion. These requirements are only intensifying as many countries face unprecedented economic and d…
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The COVID-19 pandemic is having a transformational impact on trade. The World Trade Organisation predicts trade will shrink by 9.2 percent in 2020 compared with 2019, while the International Monetary Fund has said that the pandemic “is the worst crisis since the Great Depression and that it will take significant innovation on the policy front, a…
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For resource-rich countries looking to derive value from their extractive industries beyond tax revenues and production-sharing arrangements, promoting “local content” has become a mainstay of domestic policy in the past few decades. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, governments have adopted more than 340 l…
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COVID-19 and its associated lockdowns have seriously disrupted economic activity, affecting at least 80 percent of the global workforce, according to the International Labour Organization. While such instability threatens livelihoods across the board, women are disproportionately harmed by the pandemic because it exacerbates existing inequalitie…
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Jeffrey Mecaskey is the Team Leader of the Tackling Deadly Diseases in Africa (TDDA) programme, a project designed to strengthen health security in Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, and Uganda. TDDA is funded by UK Aid and led by DAI Global Health. We recently sat with Jeffrey to discuss measures to strengthen primary healthcare system…
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This week’s news from Pfizer and Moderna about the efficacy of their COVID-19 vaccines offers a tantalizing glimmer of hope for all of us longing to get back to our lives and our work. But even if these and other vaccines are as good as advertised, global authorities will need a comprehensive and universally trusted system to confirm COVID-19 te…
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Like many countries, Honduras was forced to close its schools by COVID-19. As a result, the Asegurando la Educación (Securing Education) project—a U.S. Agency for International Development project to support safe schools—was forced to give up its face-to-face interaction with educators, students, and parents. But necessity is the mother of inven…
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A Liberian mother choked back tears as she recounted how a police commander refused to accept her report about a neighbor who raped and impregnated her 13-year-old daughter. The officer didn’t believe her. This is just one recent example of gender-based violence gleaned from DAI’s project work, but unfortunately, it is all too common, and—for mu…
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As the coronavirus pandemic stretches on, Sub-Saharan African countries have been gradually reopening thanks to largely successful efforts to combat the spread of the virus. Though scientists don’t fully understand why the continent has had low incidence and fatality rates compared to the rest of the world, most agree that quick action on the pa…
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Mobility is fundamental to global development work. People, materials, and information must reach areas that can be geographically remote or underserved by communication infrastructures. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed an industry that can no longer rely on access to travel and face-to-face engagement. With COVID-19 a global reality for the fo…
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In Haiti, more than 60 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day; in 2019, approximately 14 percent of Haitians were unemployed. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) struggle to access the capital they need to grow, create jobs, and offer valuable products and services. “If you go to Haiti, you realize that one of the country’s …
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Few countries have experienced as much change in the past 30 years as Ukraine: independence, a switch to a market-based economy, the Euromaidan Revolution, foreign occupation of its territory, and a heavy currency devaluation, to name just a few of the events that have characterized this unsettling era.
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Around the world, the advent of COVID-19 has been transformational for market systems-focused development projects. Many of the countries in which DAI works have implemented shelter-in-place orders, creating countless operational challenges as staff reduce or cease in-person interaction with partner firms, households, and other staff members. In…
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INVEST talks with advisors from USAID partner network members about the short and long-term needs of SMEs in emerging markets as these businesses attempt to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects. This post originally appeared in Impact Alpha.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the fragility of global education systems, as many schools have temporarily ceased in-person instruction and left students with unequal, inconsistent access to learning opportunities at home. Traditional education provision may not be possible for the foreseeable future. This crisis—and the threat of potential …
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The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly disrupted the provision of financial services worldwide, with many regular practices now impossible. Consumer banks have closed as part of lockdown measures, and where banks are still operational, distancing measures have constrained services and diminished provider contact. Travel restrictions in many countr…
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COVID-19 has transformed the global workforce. Many organizations, including DAI, have transitioned to almost wholly remote working. And while collaborating across locations has always been necessary at DAI—we work in more than 100 countries—the scale of remote collaboration, with so many staff working from home, has never been this great.
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Indonesia knows climate and disaster risk: a vast archipelago of more than 18,000 islands and 230 million people, the country faces earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, drought, and rising sea level. Climate change is exacerbating these risks and compounding the vulnerabilities of the Indonesian people. As recently as 2019, for example, 11…
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During the COVID-19 health crisis, land might not appear to be an urgent issue. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the pandemic is more than a health emergency—it’s an economic and social emergency too, which threatens to worsen the economic outlook for many people who are already extremely vulnerable. We know those most at risk, in Ethi…
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Nigeria has Africa’s largest economy and population. But as recently as 2016, the country ranked near the bottom of the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index, which measures business regulations and their enforcement worldwide. Nigeria’s low ranking that year—169 out of 190 countries—reflected the difficulty businesses faced in dealing with …
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At a time when social distancing and other restrictive measures are forcing almost all of our interactions to take place virtually, the European Union (EU)-funded Balochistan Rural Development and Community Empowerment (BRACE) programme in Pakistan is harvesting responsiveness from already established networks to stop the spread of COVID-19. The…
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At the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic, Vasyl Mazurin, an entrepreneur from Druzhkivka in eastern Ukraine, approached city doctors with an offer to help repair equipment that could aid patients suffering with COVID-19. Medical staff took him up on the proposal and presented him with their old, non-functioning lung ventilators. “It was our …
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Any effective government response to crises such as COVID-19 will rely on good public financial management (PFM). As the International Monetary Fund makes clear, PFM systems will play an important role in tackling the immediate challenges posed by the pandemic, which include estimating and finding the financial resources needed to confront the d…
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Since discussions began around the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the global community has agreed that education is the right of every child, regardless of socio-economic status, religion, ability, culture, or geography. Yet even as the idea of inclusive education garners support, we struggle to move beyond talk to action. DAI hosted a pan…
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While the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on developing countries continues to unfold, it seems clear that the public health response of lockdowns and business closures is having a profound effect on developing economies. In the face of dwindling revenue, private companies with limited working capital reserves are forced to lay off staff an…
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Honduran parents often pull their young children out of school to accompany them on the perilous journey to the United States because of rumors suggesting that the presence of youngsters will ensure visas for families. Older students, seeking what they perceive as a safer or more prosperous future, drop out on their own to undertake the journey….
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COVID-19 has hit economies around the world, with devastating effects on businesses. Businesses in frontier and emerging economies may face the worst debt crisis since the early 1980s. Since the advent of COVID-19, more than US$100 billion in capital has flowed out of these markets—three times as much as in the first two months of the 2008 globa…
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The past few decades have seen an intense effort to encourage investment in forward-looking renewable energy technologies, principally in onshore solar and wind generation. Over this time, a global supply chain that involves both large businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has emerged to service these onshore projects. More re…
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Jenny Baker was appointed to lead DAI’s Global Health business in March of this year. Given all that has happened in the health arena since then, it has taken us longer than usual to catch up with the incoming Senior Vice President. Here we get her perspective on health and development challenges in the era of COVID-19.
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The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), through the Honduras Local Governance Activity (HLG), is supporting the prevention and early detection of COVID-19 in 41 municipalities, 8 municipal associations, 18 nongovernment-managed health centers, 6 hospitals, 4 shelters for victims of gender-based violence, and 7 youth groups in this…
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Crisis or no crisis, gender-based violence—including sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (SEAH)—takes place where there is a combination of opportunity, rationalisation, motivation, and power imbalance. But crises tend to exacerbate the inequalities that favour these conditions. Depending on the nature of the crisis, we may see different …
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In 2016, the Government of Malawi enacted a Customary Land Act (CLA), enabling smallholder farmers to convert their customary land rights to private land rights with registered title. Crucially, the CLA gives land holders increased tenure security, which in turn is hoped to lead to increased investment in land improvements.
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Alongside priorities of healthcare and slowing the rate of infection, almost all governments have identified a range of fiscal and monetary instruments to mitigate the economic impacts of the virus.
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Even the strongest economies are struggling to cope with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. China saw its first drop in gross domestic product since 1992 and Germany, Europe’s largest economy, could contract by up to 5.4 percent this year. While it’s too soon to predict how less developed countries will fare, all indicators point to s…
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After many years of conflict, recurrent natural disasters, and humanitarian crisis, Somalia is highly susceptible to poverty and food insecurity, and its health indicators are among the worst in the world. Against this backdrop, the COVID-19 pandemic is a palpable threat to the country’s healthcare system, food security, and already fragile econ…
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Local content practitioners—particularly those working in the sustainability, contracts, procurement, and supply chain departments of large companies—face enormous pressure from two sides: on one side, the pressing need to reduce costs in light of cratering economic activity across the board, and particularly in the energy sector; on the other s…
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Statistics are of paramount importance for governance. High-quality data inform policy making and the public debate: They help assess and design policies and hold governments accountable. However, as the World Bank reported in 2017, Africa’s statistical capacity lags behind most of the developed world. Absent adequate statistics, policy makers a…
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This blog originally appeared in Science Speaks. When the sickness and deaths subside, when ventilators and face masks are back in storerooms, when health workers don’t fear for their lives as they work, and when families and friends gather once again, what will be the lesson we have learned?
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International development programmes can have far-reaching consequences, often into sectors or circumstances not immediately obvious or relevant to the programme itself. These knock-on effects can be especially fraught in the case of land, which has important cultural, economic, and social meaning to those who use it. When designing land registr…
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The rise of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization presented civilians caught in IS-controlled areas with limited choices. While a small percentage joined the group as combatants—either willfully or under coercion—more sought other ways to survive and provide for their families. In these situations, ordinary people can easily become compl…
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Editor’s Note: This post expands on a report originally prepared for the Centre for Development Results. The Somali peninsula—home to 14.32 million people—suffered a devastating drought in early 2017, leading to widespread crop failures and livestock losses that have dangerously affected the region’s food security. The Food and Agriculture Organ…
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Development responses to violent extremism are challenged by a lack of methods for rigorously testing assumptions about and determining the relative importance of different drivers of extremism. DAI’s Center for Secure and Stable States designed and implemented a mixed-methods research methodology for addressing these challenges on the Enhancing…
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Counter-threat finance—the efforts to reduce the flow of money that funds terrorism and organized crime—has been a key component of the international community’s struggle against terrorism since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. When we think of counter-threat finance, international banking, money laundering, and oil smuggling come to mi…
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In complex and unstable environments, standard performance monitoring is often insufficient to ensure activities remain relevant and adapt to the evolving ecosystem in which they are implemented. DAI’s complexity-aware planning (CAP) cycle is designed for situations where the understanding of a country’s conflict is narrow, conditions are consta…
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In conflict-affected countries, formal legal systems often are limited, with department or agency staffs absent or overloaded or both, leaving communities with few or no dispute resolution mechanisms. In their place, communities tend to rely on informal processes or institutions to resolve disputes before they escalate to violence. Development p…
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I recently traveled to South Sudan to investigate efforts to address trauma in a region that has experienced nearly 27 years of war since the 1980s. As a global development professional and trauma educator, I don’t need to be convinced of the need to address trauma as part of a portfolio of peacebuilding activities. Encouragingly, an increasing …
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As measures to counter violent extremism (CVE) are complex and unproven, development practitioners must pay attention to any and all variables that even appear to be important. One of those key common factors is the importance of a good facilitator. Luckily, the field of public health has much to teach us on this topic.
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Is it possible to build a fragility index that is truly useful as a tool for day-to-day development programming on the ground? That’s what we’re trying in Nigeria.
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It is broadly understood that language—especially generalizing and dehumanizing language—can play a central role in fostering communal violence. William Donohue has shown how the language of classification was a key early warning in the Rwandan genocide, for example. Such instances should remind the development community to be mindful of the wor…
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A review of “Conflict, Violent Extremism and Development: New Challenges, New Responses” One of the most acute challenges of working in conflict zones is differentiating between “legitimate” conflict actors and extremist groups. In countries such as Libya and Syria, state collapse has led to a proliferation of armed groups and institutions—all c…
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Recent research by DAI’s Enhancing Governance, Accountability, and Engagement (ENGAGE) project team in Mindanao demonstrates that while membership in violent extremist groups is overwhelmingly male, there is limited evidence to suggest that support for violent extremist ideologies differs fundamentally between the sexes.
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So-called fake news is an issue du jour in Washington and beyond. While it has undoubtedly been hyped for political reasons, fake news is real, its dangers clear and present—especially in unstable environments. Even in the United States, the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and subsequent Comet Ping Pong shooting in Washington, D.C., in December 2016…
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Since the Bamako Agreement of 2015, the international security and development community has invested in significant stabilization programs for Northern Mali, and specifically the Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal regions. Northern Mali and its roughly 1.3 million people are more engaged and resilient as a result, but now “the center” of the country—home…
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The social critic and author Christopher Hitchens wrote: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” Research, applied learning, and fierce debates about measuring success and failure, about embracing new ideas and technologies, and about adapting concepts and practices from both the development and national defens…
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Anyone who has worked in transition or stabilization environments knows the value of good research. But good research tends to have two drawbacks that constrain its applicability for professionals working in unstable environments: it takes time and it’s expensive. Even the best research, if it comes too late, is of little use if you’re working i…
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DAI’s newsletter, offering feature articles, opinion pieces, and interviews on DAI projects and global development issues.
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A companion publication to our Developments newsletter, showcasing innovative thinking in capsule form.
DAI’s Digital for Development blog on what we’re learning in the rapidly emerging field of ICT4D.
Checkpoint is the blog for the Center for Secure and Stable States—where development and national security intersect.