Subscribe
Subscribe today to receive CGD’s latest newsletters and topic updates.
All Commentary
Filters:
Topics
Facet Toggle
Content Type
Facet Toggle
Blog Type
Facet Toggle
Time Frame
Facet Toggle
Blog Post
January 19, 2023
Kenya has become a poster child for digitally driven development. Known as “Silicon Savannah,” the country has a multi-billion-dollar tech industry that routinely produces startups. Among its most prominent successes is M-Pesa. Launched in 2007, the mobile wallet service revolutionized how Kenyans t...
Blog Post
November 24, 2021
Prolonged school closures during COVID-19 meant that over 7.7 million Malawian children were out of formal schooling for over seven months. There is little information about the impacts of school closures and the COVID-19 crisis on these individuals. What happened to student participation over the t...
Blog Post
October 21, 2021
Dr. Joseph Atick, Executive Chairman of ID4Africa, and Alan Gelb, CGD Senior Fellow, join Gyude to discuss the evolution of ID systems across Africa, the benefits and risks of digital ID systems, and what African governments can learn from countries like India about what works and what doesn’t.
Blog Post
May 12, 2021
Each year over two million secondary-school students across Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and The Gambia sit coordinated tests known as the WASSCE. In a new CGD working paper, undertaken by researchers from CGD and IEPA-Ghana, we look at English and maths papers in West Africa’s leading high...
Blog Post
March 08, 2021
Debates on Sub-Saharan Africa’s development path and prospects often focus on two questions. Looking back, why have countries not experienced the structural transformation towards labor-intensive manufactures that has played such an important a role in the rapid development of Asian countries? And, ...
Blog Post
August 19, 2020
In 2017, Malawi was one of the only countries in the SADC and COMESA without a functioning national registry and identification system. Supported by the United Nations Development Programme together with several other donors, Malawi managed to achieve universal ID coverage in some 180 days, joi...