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...

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is addicted to fossil fuels but so too is the rest of the world. An energy transition will require a coordinated global shift in both the supply and the demand for fossil fuels and clean(er) energy, and multilateral institutions can play an important role.

We’re two weeks into the new year now, which is plenty of time for us to have broken resolutions (email at weird hours for me), to feel like we’ve been hit by a tidal wave of work (some time around January 5)  and to be totally exhausted (January 1 by around 5pm, but then, I’ve got a toddler running...

The new year has hardly begun, but fears of a looming recession persist. Pandemic-era increases in health spending are unlikely to continue in low- and middle-income countries. Growing fiscal pressures­—such as high debt, increasing interest rates, and declining foreign aid and revenues—bode ominous...

The new year brings with it a host of challenges for the EU. In a global race for strategic influence, the EU will need to make rapid choices and respond to these challenges. At stake is its own credibility as a major actor in international development. 

At the Annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF last year, shareholders asked the World Bank to come up with a set of proposals to evolve a larger role in climate and other global public goods. The Bank’s first response came pretty quick: by mid December, only a couple of months after the request, ...

At COP27 last November, the parties agreed to provide “loss and damage” funding for vulnerable countries hit hard by climate disasters. Governments also agreed to establish a “transitional committee” to make recommendations on how to operationalize both the new funding arrangements and the fund at C...