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Blog Post
April 02, 2024
“Trade not aid” is a slogan that appeals to certain instincts on both the left and right. The idea being that rich countries can do more for economic development in poor countries by granting them market access than by sending charity. But will market access really stimulate economic growth in laggi...
Blog Post
October 28, 2022
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Monetary Fund estimated that low-income countries would, on average, need to collect an amount equal to at least 5 percent of their GDP in additional revenue by 2030 to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in five key areas. For many sub-Sa...
Blog Post
February 03, 2022
A couple weeks ago, Uganda finally ended the longest national school closure on record, reopening its public schools after nearly two full years. One might anticipate a fairly dramatic decline in learning levels. Indeed, in a very non-scientific poll of my twitter followers, the dominant view was th...
Blog Post
September 01, 2021
When schools in Sierra Leone closed last March, the government was more ready than many to respond. We designed a randomised control trial which assigned 4,399 students from 25 government primary schools to receive—in addition to the standard access to the government’s broadcast that all students re...
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
July 27, 2020
In this blog post, we argue that the COVID-19 crisis has made it imperative for developing countries to begin reforming their tax systems to generate more resources domestically—reforms which they have postponed until now because of vested interests. Reforming tax expenditures would not only ge...