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.
Developments
In 2021, DAI introduced an internal innovation competition that saw 17 technical teams across the company compete for funding to support high-potential development tools and approaches; the six successful candidates spent the second half of the year piloting their ideas. Kimberly Keeton discussed one of these successful pilots with Rhi Gulick, a…
Read MoreDigital
In a previous blog on Five Fresh Tips to Make Digital Safety Cool Again: A Case Study from Thailand, we discussed lessons learned from implementing the ‘Wai Kid Digital’ Challenge, a series of virtual training bootcamps with university students on digital safety and creative video production. Looking back two months after the activity wrapped up…
Read MoreDevelopments
What happens to entrepreneurs after they have completed a three-to-nine-month accelerator program, often including months of training, pitch presentations, and culminating in graduation? That’s a question many corporate funders and program managers are left wondering. Without an answer, it is near impossible to measure and report on a program’s …
Read MoreDevelopments
Good nutrition is important for everyone—but for the most vulnerable people, healthy diets can mean the difference between life or death. To design effective nutrition programs, international development practitioners need to understand what defines people as vulnerable, what causes that vulnerability, and what to do about it. Recent guidance on…
Read MoreDigital
As we head into 2022 and reflect on two years of a global pandemic, new ways of connecting with colleagues and partners, and new areas of work, we at DAI’s Center for Digital Acceleration (CDA) feel as though we’ve been both sprinting and diving deep at the same time. The last couple of years gave us thrilling new work, new research areas, and o…
Read MoreDevelopments
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Financial Sector Transformation (FST) Activity in 2016 to support efforts to reform Ukraine’s financial sector. The FST team worked closely with government, international financial institutions (IFIs), and other market actors in the reform process, with a focus on long-lasting ch…
Read MoreDevelopments
When the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Financial Sector Transformation (FST) activity in 2016, Ukraine was in a deep financial crisis. Its lead financial regulator, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), was managing the closure and liquidation of close to 100 banks and addressing the need to nationalize the country…
Read MoreDigital
I remember when my family first got an Amazon Prime membership. At the time, I was a freshman in college living on campus with no car. A trip to the grocery store was a half-day adventure involving multiple bus rides, weaving through weekend shoppers, and then lugging all my purchases back to my room. This all changed with two-day shipping. With…
Read MoreDevelopments
Earlier this year, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Organisation for Animal Health, the United Nations Environment Programme, and the World Health Organization launched the One Health High Level Expert panel to develop solutions to some of the planet’s most difficult health challenges that cut across human, animal, and environmen…
Read MoreDigital
The proliferation of user-generated content enabled by improved connectivity and access to digital platforms is unlocking new economic opportunities, while also fomenting disinformation and falsehoods with potentially deleterious effects on society. Misinformation and disinformation can erode the trust and credibility of our public institutions,…
Read MoreDigital
A lack of digital connectivity is a prelude to exclusion in today’s rapidly changing world. Yet, more than 600 million people worldwide remain uncovered by mobile networks and broadband services. COVID-19 exacerbated the effects of this deep digital divide that continues to leave many communities disconnected, uninformed, and without access to l…
Read MoreDigital
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to strengthen cybersecurity by detecting cyber threats more quickly and effectively. Imagine, for instance, if embedded malware meant to disrupt a hospital system’s operation was detected within minutes of its installation, rather than after it disrupted access to electronic medical health records, delayi…
Read MoreDigital
Digital Frontiers’ South Asia Regional Digital Initiative (SARDI) recently conducted a scoping study to explore barriers facing women in technology in South Asia, particularly those who are looking to scale and grow their businesses and engage on a regional level. A total of 47 in-depth interviews conducted in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri L…
Read MoreDigital
Identifying and defining digital literacy can be challenging for even the most seasoned of digital development practitioners. “My previous work was very much related to digital literacy, but I didn’t recognize it as such,” shared Erica Bustinza, Project Director for the Digital Strategy Activity under the Digital Frontiers Project, which support…
Read MoreDigital
A notification pops up on a business’s computer and says they have several days to pay an amount before all their data is deleted. This business just became a victim of ransomware—a debilitating cyberattack that can shut down entire companies and result in enormous financial losses. How do we protect businesses from experiencing these forms of a…
Read MoreDigital
We’ve all seen sensational headlines. Whether you find them through Twitter or via a WhatsApp group, headlines such as, “How Scientists got Climate Change So Wrong” (yes, that is a real opinion piece published in 2019 by The New York Times), are designed to provoke a strong emotional reaction in the reader and leave them with a false impression …
Read MoreDigital
Have you ever suffered the consequences of someone else’s online gaming habits? Maybe it was your college roommate playing World of Warcraft mere hours before your 8am exam, your partner choosing Call of Duty over date night, or your child’s “hidden” Candy Crush play under the dinner table as you tried to ask about their day. It is not unheard o…
Read MoreDigital
As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) proliferates, more instances of the inequitable design, use, and impact of AI-enabled tools in developing countries are coming to light. Many of these tools and approaches have the capacity for inequitable outcomes across genders due to humans unconsciously embedding bias in AI technology during data co…
Read MoreDevelopments
In June, the G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and development finance institutions (DFIs) renewed and extended their commitment to gender-smart investing (GSI) through the 2X Challenge. They pledged to mobilize $15 billion by 2022 to provide women in developing countries with improved access t…
Read MoreDevelopments
The U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office-funded Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF) sought to demonstrate that women in the Middle East have the interest, skills, and ability to play a much more active role in the economy. This unique program worked to improve women’s access to opportunities while supporting their agency—their voi…
Read MoreDevelopments
Many scientists and academics are warning that the next pandemic is right in front of us. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), or bacteria developing resistance to drugs, has been growing in recent years, primarily due to overuse of antibiotics.
Read MoreDigital
As we approach the second year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world continues to reflect on the stark realities the crisis has forced us all to acknowledge, including key drivers of economic resilience for individual businesses. As countries take steps toward economic stabilization, it is clear that micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME…
Read MoreDigital
It is an understatement to say that data are often imperfect. There are often holes, missing pieces that always seem to be precisely the required piece to cement the foundation of your carefully crafted research question. The process of massaging that research question will not be covered here, but data exploration is pivotal in discovering what…
Read MoreDevelopments
Demand for clean energy is rapidly growing in Vietnam. To help mobilize finance for investment in clean energy, the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Vietnam Urban Energy Security project is working hand in hand with city governments in Danang and Ho Chi Minh City. There is, however, a critical gap between the finance available fr…
Read MoreDevelopments
Climate change works against the achievement of all the Sustainable Development Goals, from poverty reduction and food security to institution and capacity building. Recent World Bank estimates show that inaction on climate change will force 100 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030. Floods and droughts, reduced water supplies, and th…
Read MoreDigital
One of the wonders of the digital age is that if at 11 pm I suddenly crave a pizza (Hawaiian preferably—no shame!), all I have to do is click a few buttons on my phone, and voila! pizza is delivered to my door. While it may feel like the pizza arrived by magic, especially given the “no-contact” options made available since the start of COVID-19,…
Read MoreDevelopments
Marwan Kaiss has been the Mayor of Batloun, Lebanon, since 2016. Batloun is a small town in the Chouf district, which forms part of the Chouf Biosphere Reserve. Its natural beauty, proximity to the Reserve, and rich history make it a top spot for environmental and cultural tourism. Mayor Kaiss is driven to see Batloun become a “green town” and h…
Read MoreDigital
As the number of digitally enabled agricultural products and services continues to grow in regions across the globe, most of the data collected by the digital service providers developing these tools remain locked within each entity’s systems. Due to incomplete, fragmented, or non-existent data sets on agri-food system stakeholders, such as farm…
Read MoreDigital
When predicting which technologies might have an impact on international development in the coming years, shifts in the economics of a technology are often more indicative of impending transformation than improvements in its capabilities. Particularly in emerging markets, even older technologies can suddenly become disruptive once their cost dro…
Read MoreDevelopments
Adapting to climate change and building resilience to its harmful effects is especially important in countries where the population is highly vulnerable to the effects of global warming, such as Ethiopia. That’s exactly what the GCCA+/Climate Smart Mainstreaming into the Productive Safety Net Program (Climate-Smart PSNP) has been focused on sinc…
Read MoreDigital
Like much of the developing world, Costa Rica has limited availability of digital technologies compared to industrialized nations. Due to this lag in digital transformation, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, commerce in Costa Rica was highly affected, leading to business disruption and unemployment. As of June, the country’s unemployment rate was …
Read MoreDevelopments
Despite greater economic stability since 2000, Honduras has yet to significantly improve living conditions or reduce poverty for much of its citizenry. The National Autonomous University of Honduras reported that, in 2020, the extreme poverty rate had reached 53.4 percent and the total poverty rate 70 percent. Some economists have warned that th…
Read MoreDevelopments
Already facing severe climate-related disruptions, Bangladesh is now enduring the additional economic and human development setback of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both threaten to reverse the considerable gains made to reduce poverty and inequality in the country. Bangladesh is trying to stay one step ahead, however, by building social protection and…
Read MoreDigital
Throughout this past summer, DAI’s Center for Digital Acceleration has been working with the Sesame Workshop on its Play to Learn program to explore the possibilities for using digital tools to provide education services among children, ages 3 to 8, living in crisis-affected communities.
Read MoreDeveloping Alternatives
Climate change is leading to higher average temperatures and greater rainfall variability, with a pronounced effect on agricultural productivity and the suitability of major crops in Ethiopia. Farming households with tenure security are more likely to choose to access credit and to invest in their land by planting trees and longer-term crops, an…
Read MoreDevelopments
Over the past few weeks, I had grown concerned about the lack of clear direction and energy around climate talks in the run-up to COP26. At a time when unity and cooperation are the order of the day, world leaders appeared to be in discord. But announcements at the United Nations General Assembly in New York give me renewed optimism that when th…
Read MoreDevelopments
The Philippines is a megadiverse country with rich marine diversity and unique coral reefs that 1,100 terrestrial invertebrates and 5 percent of the world’s flora call home. Sadly, these biodiversity assets face pressures such as land conversion for agriculture and settlements; illegal, unregulated, and unreported harvesting; and destructive min…
Read MoreDevelopments
The UK Aid-funded Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF) began operations in 2015. Since then, it has brought about systemic change to market systems, giving women of all ages better access to economic opportunities. It has encouraged the adoption of new practices and approaches that support women’s economic empowerment in Egypt, Jordan, and Palest…
Read MoreDeveloping Alternatives
Malawi’s population is primarily rural, with most of the agricultural sector comprising farmers cultivating small, rain-fed plots intended to grow food for their own consumption. With a rapidly increasing population, the pressure on Malawi’s land and natural resources is high, particularly for smallholder farmers.
Read MoreDeveloping Alternatives
Large capital projects are evaluated using the “weighted average cost of capital,” or WACC. Traditionally, WACC is composed of two elements: the cost of debt and the cost of equity. The Dasgupta review on The Economics of Biodiversity, along with the growing consensus in capital markets and financial regulation to account for all risks, makes cl…
Read MoreDevelopments
Approximately three-fourths the size of California, the Philippines is brimming with biodiversity. It is among the world’s 17 megadiverse countries that host more than 70 percent of the world’s plant and animal species. However, systems and local capacity to conserve, protect, and channel rich biodiversity and ecosystems toward sustainable devel…
Read MoreDevelopments
As global economies turn toward renewable energy generation, energy storage solutions are becoming a critical part of the conversation. For Sub-Saharan Africa, which faces the largest energy access deficit globally, and where 600 million people lack access to electricity, innovations in energy technology are critical.
Read MoreDevelopments
In times of crisis—a natural disaster, political upheaval, or a global pandemic, for example—the social contract is often threatened. Governments must respond immediately despite operating with limited data, external groups with unknown agendas may choose to intervene, and vulnerable groups face greater risk of exploitation. “Power grabs” in tim…
Read MoreDevelopments
Liberia is home to half of the remaining rainforest in West Africa. Covering more than 60 percent of the nation’s land surface, forests are the fourth-largest contributor to Liberia’s economy and an important source of income for one-third of its 4.5 million people. They also make Liberia one of the world’s hotspots for biological diversity, hos…
Read MoreDevelopments
In the years leading up to 2020, school enrollment in Honduras suffered a steady decline. In 2018, 81,000 students (4.06 percent) dropped out. In 2019, some 105,000 students (or 5.39 percent of the total) abandoned their education to seek work, join gangs, or migrate without documents to the United States. Approaching the opening of the new scho…
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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 GIE Solar Energy Project—funded by the World Bank Group and financed through the Palestinian Ministry of Finance’s Finance for Jobs (F4J) program—lost approximately …
Read MoreDevelopments
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 …
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDeveloping Alternatives
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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.
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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.
Read MoreDevelopments
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 …
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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 …
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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.
Read MoreDevelopments
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 …
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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.
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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.
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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.
Read MoreDevelopments
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.
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreDevelopments
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.
Read MoreDevelopments
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 …
Read MoreDevelopments
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…
Read MoreLooking for articles from a particular publication or focused on a particular topic? Click below to filter.
DAI’s newsletter, offering feature articles, opinion pieces, and interviews on DAI projects and global development issues.
A forum for our professional staff and guest authors to share their ideas in depth and address issues of enduring interest.
DAI’s Digital for Development blog on what we’re learning in the rapidly emerging field of ICT4D.