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Links of the day, country update edition
A smattering of updates from around Africa: Burundi: Conflicting judicial mechanisms for land reallocation and titling after the civil war are keeping the potential for renewed tensions alive. Central...
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Links of the day
Stability, the International Journal of Security and Development, is a new open-access journal which aims to quickly get relevant academic research to policymakers. Tom Murphy points out that cancer...
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Violent struggle and authoritarian durability
I’m only a few months behind the curve on this one – Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way had a very interesting article in December’s issue of Perspectives on Politics called “Beyond Patronage: Violent...
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What explains peace?
In case you missed it, Jon Temin had a great article at Foreign Policy last month asking a critically important question: “Why don’t the policymakers and practitioners looking to end the world’s...
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Recent articles on conflict
Here’s a handful of interesting articles & books that have passed through my huge pile of unsorted PDFs neatly tagged Evernote notebooks recently. I’ve included links to ungated versions when...
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Summer Swahili at Berkeley
If you’re interested in learning Swahili, I’d highly recommend this summer course at Berkeley, which is offered by my current instructor. Click here to learn more, and do feel free to get in touch...
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Uncovering researchers’ implicit bias
I loved this post from the World Bank’s Let’s Talk Development blog on uncovering researchers’ own biases in survey design: Last year, I was in Nairobi, Kenya … to set up the data collection efforts...
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Links I liked
Interesting case study of the promise and limitations of participatory budgeting in Cameroon’s capitol (via Jamie Hitchen & Nick Branson) Nanjala Nyabola writes that Wangari Maathai was not a good...
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The ethics of cash transfer targeting
[Update as of 16 November 2015: this post has been edited to accurately reflect GiveDirectly’s role in the study. They did not design the randomization scheme and had not seen the results before the...
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Fall 2015 conference highlights
The omnibus conference blog post has returned! Loads of interesting papers to report on from this fall. Melissa Dell, Nathan Lane, and Pablo Querubin. “State Capacity, Local Governance, and Economic...
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Dinner with John Githongo
John Githongo (source) I’m quite behind the times on this, but in April, I had the chance to attend a dinner at Stanford for visiting scholar John Githongo. It was a fascinating chance to hear from a...
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Updates from GiveDirectly
A few weeks ago, I participated in an open conference call with the staff of GiveDirectly. They discussed their performance in 2015, and plans for future expansion. A recording of the call and their...
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Links I liked
Thought for the day (via Tumblr) Somalia is going through a construction boom as Mogadishu slowly stabilizes. However, life appears to be getting worse for Somali-Kenyans, who must often substitute...
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Links I liked
Fantastic Port Harcourt photography from Enefaa Thomas GiveDirectly is launching a new basic income program in Kenya. They’ll match the first US$10 million of donations, and (on my grad student...
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Links I liked
Loved this series of 1000 portraits from Sudan The AU plans to introduce a single passport, which will let African citizens travel around the continent without visas. Then everyone can pop over to...
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Links I liked
Your first choice for impulsive decisions that leave your bank account in shambles the next day (via Mpasho News) This week in protests: Kenyans took to the streets to ask the government to...
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Links I liked
This and other interesting graphs to be found at the new African Visual Data site There’s been some excellent analysis of the crisis in South Sudan recently, including Aly Verjee‘s analysis of the...
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Fall conference highlights
Three weeks, three conferences, many great papers to share! Ryan Briggs. “Power to which people? Electoral politics and electrification targeting in Ghana.” Presented at APSA. This paper isn’t...
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Links I liked
Celebrating the work of James Barnor, one of the first photographers to work with color film in Ghana There’s a lot going on in the DRC right now. The US hedge fund Och-Ziff was fined for US$100...
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Links I liked
The Mail & Guardian‘s editorial cartoonist has been on point about Zuma lately Zimbabwe is descending deeper into economic crisis as shortage of dollars have forced the reintroduction of a...
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