VoxDev Development Economics VoxDev.org

Agriculture makes up a large share of employment and GDP in Africa, but crop yields remain stubbornly low. VoxDev has published Issue 2 of Agricultural Technology in Africa, which reviews what the published literature can – and cannot – explain about this stagnation. Chris Udry, one of the editors, tells Tim Phillips about the impact of this stagnation on living standards in Africa, and insights from recent research that can potentially make a difference.

Read the VoxDevLit: https://voxdev.org/voxdevlit/agricultural-technology-africa

How can we take what we learn in educational RCTs and apply it at scale to many
schools, maybe in many countries? Adrienne Lucas talks to Tim Phillips about the
project she was part of to improve learning in Ghana, the difference between small-
and large-scale trials, and the challenge of implementing policies results without
perfect compliance or daily monitoring.

In high-income countries, we take a reliable electricity supply for granted. But in parts
of the world where that reliable electricity supply isn’t available, what is the effect of
frequent power outages on employment? Justice Tei Mensah of The World Bank tells
Tim Phillips about how power cuts translate to job cuts.

In September 2022 António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, convened the Transforming Education Summit by telling education stakeholders from around the world that education is “beset by inequalities and struggling to adjust to the needs of the 21st century”. Their task: to tackle the global learning crisis by transforming their education systems. Robert Jenkins of UNICEF talks to Tim Phillips about the progress that has been made to solve what he calls “the global learning crisis”.

What determines how a war is fought, and who chooses to fight it? Eleonora Guarnieri of the University of Exeter talks to Tim Phillips about how cultural distance influences whether, and how, sexual violence is used as a weapon of war – and its role in civil conflict in Africa.

If you go to college in a low- or middle-income country (LMIC), how does it help you, and what do you get from it? Two questions that would seem to have obvious answers – but these questions may be more complicated for policymakers to answer than they seem. Jishnu Das tells Tim Phillips that “the demographic dividend seems to be turning into a demographic nightmare” – and what researchers and policymakers can do about it.