Blog

18 April 2019

Pritish Behuria

This article appeared in a special edition of The East African for #Kwibuka25 in commemoration of 25 years since the Rwandan genocide.

This year marks 25 years of Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rule since the 1994 genocide. Over that time, President Paul Kagame and his government have led the government through a remarkable period of economic recovery, alongside impressive increases in social standards. For a densely populated country, at a geographical disadvantage of being land-locked and located far from coasts, to achieve such successes has been a remarkable feat. Yet, despite progress in Rwanda, the country continues to face external and internal pressures that may pose a threat to sustaining the miracle of the country’s recovery. Continue Reading →

17 April 2019

Professor Anthony Bebbington

Having somebody else explain to you what your book is about is both a luxury and a pleasure. When they do so in public, it is also daunting: will they understand it the same way that you do? Did you do a good enough job trying to present your argument? Will they find it relevant? These were some of the thoughts in my mind on 4 April 2019, when Scott Sellwood, Oxfam America’s Senior Program Advisor in Extractive Industries, presented our book, Governing Extractive Industries, to a room of Oxfam staff, representatives of Washington-based organisations, and students. It was revealing to see what Scott found most striking about the book. These were his words: Continue Reading →

16 April 2019

Leading experts Tim Kelsall, Sam Hickey and Brian Levy recently presented ESID’s main findings at The Mandela School of Public Governance in Cape Town: ‘How politics, development and state effectiveness interact – main findings of a global research partnership’.

3 April 2019

Tim Williams

Based on Dr William’s research published in World Development, this post was originally featured as a guest blog for The Rise Programme.

Over the last two decades, the Rwandan government has received global recognition for its impressive efforts to improve children’s education through expanded access, a decentralised system, and performance-based accountability. Despite these efforts, evidence suggests that education quality remains extremely low. A recent study found that after Primary 1, 66 percent cannot read any word of the local language, Kinyarwanda; 64 percent of students who are promoted to Primary 2 still score zero percent on a literacy assessment; and for those who reach Primary 6, 85 percent have repeated at least one grade.

How might the educational successes of the sector be reconciled with the poor quality outcomes observed?

Most studies of education quality tend to focus on the technical aspects of policy implementation. At the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre at The University of Manchester, we take a different approach. We study issues like education quality through the lens of politics, adopting a research concept called ‘political settlements’. This strand of investigation focuses on elite commitment to inclusive development. Studying the incentives, institutions and individuals that comprise a political settlement provides insight into how meaningful and equitable change for the poor can be brought about and sustained. Continue Reading →