Asha Amirali
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“The rise and fall of the Department for International Development” by Mark Lowcock and Ranil Dissanayanke: a review
By James Copestake DFID lasted 23 years, created as an autonomous department by the incoming Labour government of Tony Blair in 1997 and dissolved by the Conservative government headed by Boris Johnson in June 2020. This book tells its story...
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“Navigating the polycrisis” by Michael J. Albert: a review.
By James Copestake It doesn’t follow from the failure of countries to follow a neat progression from feudalism to communism via capitalism that Karl Marx had nothing useful to say about causal mechanisms affecting the course of history. Likewise, we...
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Rethinking Renewables
By Asha Amirali, first published in Dawn. WHY is renewable energy in the doldrums in Pakistan despite annual oil import bills of $27 billion? There are many explanations, but most common is the lack of finance. No one wants to...
More from this author
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Billionaire backlash shows the power of basic income
Neil Howard writes about how the success of basic income pilots in the US has scared the rich so much that they are rallying against more pilots. This piece was first published in Al Jazeera. Last month, the US state...
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Yes, institutions matter for national digitization journeys, particularly innovative endogenous institutions that include women
By Ruth Goodwin-Groen When I started as the Founding Managing Director of the United Nations hosted Better Than Cash Alliance in October 2012 (having recently completed a mid-career PhD at Bath), the goal was clear: to create a global movement...
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Fears about falling birthrate in England and Wales are misplaced – the population is due to grow for years to come
Mel Channon challenges a common misconception about trends in population growth. This piece was first published in the Conversation. The number of babies born in England and Wales in 2022 fell by 3.1% compared to the previous year. The average...
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Why renewed China-US cooperation bodes well for climate action
In this piece first published in The Conversation, Yixian Sun lays out why we should be optimistic about recent high-level developments in China-US relations. The relationship between the US and China is the most important in the world, and it...
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'We miners die a lot'. Appalling conditions and poverty wages: the lives of cobalt miners in the DRC
In this piece first published in The Conversation, Roy Maconachie discusses labour condition in DRC's mining sector. It was a cool, dusty morning in July 2021, when I first visited the Kamilombe cobalt mine in Lualaba Province in south-eastern Democratic...
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Picking up the pieces of the UK’s conflict and development policy
Oliver Walton and Andrew Johnstone discuss how UK conflict and development policy since 2015 has become more fragmented and explore the wider implications of this case for the security-development nexus. International development policy in UK, long seen as a relatively...
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Tobacco production, livelihood diversification in Malawi… and some UK connections
James Copestake On 16 November this year Malawi ratified the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) - see WHO (2023). This is worthy of note given that the main thrust of this global agreement is to...