Aid effectiveness in a changing landscape – the case of global funds and programs

Aid delivered to fight poverty and to foster development risks failing due to fragmentation and volatility.  While traditional donors have set up new bilateral and multilateral channels, private and non-DAC-actors have dramatically increased their funding role in recent years. Additional players are welcomed since they bring new resources and new approaches, but the recent evolution [...]

Resources and Outcomes in Public Schools

This study probes the connection between resources and outcomes in South African public schools. It aims to develop a deeper understanding of the effects of socio-economic segregation and inadequate resources on the lives of poor learners. Education is a potent tool in the fight against poverty and other forms of inequality, but to be effective, [...]

Eskom – we need a public conversation

By Richard Calland and Gary Pienaar Picking holes in the governance of electricity supply, and energy policy more generally, is like shooting fish in a barrel. Whether it is the development and sequencing of key policy documents, the absence of proper stakeholder consultation, leadership failure, or the lack of clarity about intragovernmental roles and responsibilities, [...]

The winners eat and the losers don’t …

- By Stefan Gilbert – About an hour after the plane was scheduled to depart, we were told that the flight to Sierra Leone would be delayed by six hours. This, I was told, would make for an interesting night. The trick with Sierra Leone is that you must cross the peninsula to get to [...]

Helping Africa Save Itself

By Witney W. Schneidman originally published in Newsweek, June 2009 Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born economist, lays out a brash argument in her book, DEAD AID: that the more than $1 trillion in foreign assistance given to Africa over the past 50 years is the root cause of the continent’s enduring poverty, widespread corruption, civil wars, [...]

Afrobarometer – Democracy in Africa

Read the latest releases from Afrobarometer on the following topics: The Evolution of African Political Regimes in the last 10 years; Poverty Reduction, Economic Growth and Democratisation in Southern Africa; African Media and Telecommunications; and Citizens and Democratisation. See these releases here.