Biniam Bedasso argues that free school meals improve enrollment, attendance, learning outcomes and help food-insecure countries. But Farzana Afridi thinks we need more evidence on long-term gains.

In 2021, Ghana announced a plan to issue sovereign bonds of up to $2 billion, with proceeds due partially to fund a free secondary school program. Just months later, Ghana’s rising debt burden means this is no longer feasible. Can developing countries tap the social bond market in order to fund publ...

The use of foreign aid to support poor countries with inadequate implementation capacity and weak regulatory institutions has at times, been described as “pouring money into a leaky bucket.” Given that there is seldom a quick fix for inadequate state capacity, aid programs can employ internal contro...

We worked with the Joint Learning Network (JLN) Efficiency Collaborative to gain insights from Collaborative members who represent technical staff and decision-makers working at the heart of health benefit packages development and revisions in eleven low-and middle-income countries in Africa and Asi...

African countries will continue to face tough choices on COVID-19 vaccines—we’ve developed a Toolkit that can help.

In this recent policy paper, we examined 247 studies published between January and March 2021 that contained empirical analyses and covered gender-focused aspects of mental health, COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes and practices, COVID-19 clinical outcomes, maternal and child health, and sexual and repr...

Every now and then we get asked by education donors whether and how they should fund the private education sector. It’s an important question: around 20 percent of children enrolled in primary school in low income countries attend private primary schools.