Cgd Podcast With Rajesh Mirchandani

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia and Africa’s first elected female president, on the impact of private sector investment, the urgency of action on climate change, and the resilience of developing countries.

King's College London lecturer Alice Evans on how social change happens, the consequences of male bias for developing countries, and the larger takeaways of the "#sausagefest" incident for development experts. 

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim on robots in the workplace, multilateral cooperation, and the development potential of blockchain. 

Marie-Claude Bibeau, Canadian Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, on Canada's new feminist international assistance policy, the need for psychosocial support for refugees, and the links between family planning and development.

DFID's new chief economist Rachel Glennerster on her goals for the organization, how to help girls stay in school, and why even low price barriers can pose big problems for takeup of health interventions.

What's going to happen in the world of development in 2018? Will we finally understand how to deal equitably with refugees and migrants? Or how technological progress can work for developing countries? Or what the impact of year two of the Trump Administration will be? Today’s podcast, our final episode of 2017, raises these questions and many more as a multitude of CGD scholars share their insights and hopes for the year ahead.

History was made in Zimbabwe this week as Robert Mugabe finally agreed to resign the presidency after almost four decades in power. How the country will be governed by new leadership is still very much unknown—yet it is not too early for the international community to start considering how it can offer help to rebuild Zimbabwe’s economy for the benefit of its people. Todd Moss, CGD senior fellow and longtime Zimbabwe watcher, shares specific things that donor governments and international institutions can do.

India's biometric ID system Aadhaar has provided over a billion people with digital IDs, and changed how the country's government provides services and subsidies. But opponents of the system say that Aadhaar erodes people’s privacy. Nandan Nilekani, the chief architect of the platform, joins the CGD podcast to address these concerns, discuss the platform's progress, and share his vision for future uses of "societal platforms."

More than 65 million people are forcibly displaced, for on average about ten years. That's the scale of the problem facing Mark Lowcock, the new UN Emergency Relief Coordinator and Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs. This is not only a short-term humanitarian problem but a development issue as well. How should the system to respond? Mark Lowcock joins CGD's president Masood Ahmed to discuss.

  China has long been the factory of the world. But as wages there rise, manufacturers are looking to other countries and regions. Meanwhile, African countries have a huge and burgeoning population of young people looking for jobs. So now many wonder—could Africa be the next big destination for manufacturers? And if not, then what? CGD senior fellow Vijaya Ramachandran joins the podcast to discuss a new CGD paper on that very question.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh in a matter of weeks. The UN has called the situation “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” What can the international community, and especially the US, do about it? Refugees International's Eric Schwartz and CGD's Jeremy Konyndyk have some ideas.

3.5 million children around the world are refugees, many with little or no access to schooling. That means we won’t come anywhere near our targets for the fourth Sustainable Development Goal—quality education for all—unless we can address the refugee crisis. Save the Children International president Helle Thorning-Schmidt joins the CGD podcast to discuss how donor countries can help.

Businesses have unique opportunities to help refugees and improve their bottom line at the same time, says CGD senior policy fellow Cindy Huang. All they need is the right policy framework. Get the highlights from Huang’s latest report, “Global Business and Refugee Crises,” a collaboration with the Tent Foundation.

How well do your country's policies make a positive difference for people in developing nations? That’s the question CGD seeks to answer each year in our Commitment to Development Index (CDI). The team behind the CDI, deputy director of CGD Europe Ian Mitchell and policy analyst Anita Käppeli, join me to discuss why these rankings matter, how countries stack up, and how their scores may be impacted by the shifting political environment.

Recently the UN warned that 20 million people are facing famine in four countries. How can the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) help? Gilbert Houngbo, former Prime Minister of Togo and new IFAD president, joins the CGD podcast to discuss IFAD's impact and unique mandate. 

CGD experts Michael Clemens and Gaurav Khanna look at high- and low-skilled workers from three countries across several decades. Different studies, different perspectives—but all pointing at the same thing: immigrants have an overwhelmingly net positive effect on the US economy.

What are the economic, political, and technological risks to future global growth and stability? This complex question was the topic of a recent conversation between IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and CGD's president Masood Ahmed. This week's podcast is an edited version of their conversation.

At a recent conference, donors promised generous funding for family planning services in developing countries. At the same time, however, future support from the US is in doubt, and progress towards the FP2020 family planning goals has been extremely limited. Just how much progress have we made, and how far do we have to go? What difference will the new pledges make, and how should they be used? Rachel Silverman, CGD’s assistant director of global health policy, responds to these questions in this week’s podcast.

The US agricultural sector is critical to global food security, but many of the policies that currently govern it negatively impact people around the world. In a new book, CGD visiting fellow Kim Elliott argues for practical policy reforms in three areas that are particularly damaging to developing countries: food aid, biofuel subsidies, and antibiotic resistance in livestock. As the US Congress works through a major new farm bill, Elliott joins the CGD Podcast to discuss how the US can reform agricultural policy to achieve better outcomes.

What impact does corruption have on development, and what’s the best way to stamp it out? In a new book called "Results, Not Receipts," CGD senior fellow Charles Kenny offers a way to strengthen the case for aid and reduce corruption at the same time: focus on outcomes, rather than inputs.