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
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 …
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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…
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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…
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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 MoreDigital
Throughout this past summer, DAI’s Center for Digital Acceleration has been working with Sesame Workshop to explore the possibilities for using digital tools to provide education services to young children living in crisis-affected communities. Using DAI’s Frontier Insights™ methodology, our researchers in Colombia, Yemen, and South Sudan talked…
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Throughout the summer, the DAI Center for Digital Acceleration has been working with Sesame Workshop to explore the possibilities for using digital tools to provide education services to young children in crisis-affected communities. Using DAI’s Frontier Insights™ methodology, our researchers in Colombia, Yemen, and South Sudan talked to childre…
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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…
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Throughout the summer, DAI’s Center for Digital Acceleration has been working with the Sesame Workshop exploring the use of digital education tools for young children in crisis-affected communities. Using DAI’s Frontier Insights™ methodology, our researchers in Colombia, South Sudan, and Yemen spoke with children and their parents and caregivers…
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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…
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Over the last 25 years, Bangalore, India, has transformed itself from a relatively sleepy second-tier city into a regional anchor for global technology corporations and a hub for innovative technology-driven startups. The international development community has cheered the growth of similar hubs in low- and middle-income countries—think Nairobi’…
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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…
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As discussed in part one of this series, agile is an umbrella term that encapsulates a number of frameworks, strategies, and tools. In this second installment, we dive a bit deeper into what agile is in practice by highlighting some of the most common frameworks used by agile teams. This primer on agile frameworks and methods will by no means be…
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With its relatively low maintenance cost, increased transparency, reduced administrative burden, and resilience to fraud, blockchain is a versatile technology deployed in many sectors and businesses. So, what is blockchain, and could this disruptive technology have any application for managing intellectual property (IP) rights such as patents, c…
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As the world familiarizes itself with online learning in our COVID-19-affected times, we have been exposed to many seamless ways to experience remote learning. However, when we switch roles—from learning to developing different types of courses—this generalized exposure and all the technical terms for ways digital learning material is presented …
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Digital literacy goes beyond knowing how to create a TikTok account. True digital literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, comprehend, and use technology. Engaging with online content while simultaneously knowing the risks and limitations of technology is vital when participating in the digital world. Children today are using technology, now m…
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A combination of mainstream media attention and Elon Musk’s Twitter feed has reignited the public interest in distributed ledger technologies, commonly referred to as the blockchain. CDA is no stranger to this technology; check out our blog post on blockchain and how we’ve applied these concepts in-house. Blockchain-based applications leverage t…
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Artificial intelligence (AI) presents one of the most difficult challenges to traditional regulation. Three decades ago, software was programmed; today, it’s trained. AI itself is not one technology or singular development. It is a bundle of technologies whose decision-making mode is often not fully understood even by AI developers. AI solutions…
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New investments in emerging technologies offer transformational opportunities in developing countries—particularly for rural and remote populations benefiting from internet connectivity. This blog highlights three developments for potential donor interventions to work with the private sector, governments, and users to bridge the digital divide. …
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Widespread digitalization has revolutionized almost every industry, including music and sound production. While rarely the focus of digital development initiatives, creative entrepreneurs such as artists and musicians in emerging economies have also found themselves scrambling to adapt to the ever-changing technology and social media landscapes….
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Digital tools and services such as short message services (SMS), digitally enabled extension services, and artificial intelligence have helped market system actors in developing countries overcome common challenges in the agriculture sector, such as accessing weather information and diagnosing pest or disease outbreaks. Despite the documented va…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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When we peel back the planning, strategy design, project management, and technical implementation layers of any creation, we see something more intuitive. More human. And that’s the desire to “create.” Terms such as “innovation,” “research and development,” and “discovery” capture the adventure of the creative process. But garnering that same in…
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Traditional lending channels are blocking access to climate finance. The large commercial banks that receive funds from investment banks accredited by the Green Climate Fund typically seek smaller financial institutions in local markets to distribute these funds. However, these smaller institutions often lack the tools needed to appraise risk an…
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As most people in the international development community know, Samantha Power, former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations under President Barack Obama, was nominated and officially sworn in as the 19th Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on May 3. During her confirmation hearing testimony, she …
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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…
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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.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) applications are rapidly evolving to include more complex and advanced tasks. As a result, the number of meaningful use cases relevant to the development sector are expanding and demonstrate significant potential to solve some of the world’s most prominent challenges.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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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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 …
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 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.
A forum for our professional staff and guest authors to share their ideas in depth and address issues of enduring interest.
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.