Harvard Center for International Development

Earlier this year, thousands of Bangladesh garment workers clashed with the police as they tried to push for higher wages. One person was killed as the police fired rubber bullets and tear gas against the protesters. This is unfortunately common throughout low-end supply chains. Governments try to repress laborers in order to curb minimum wage increases and keep costs low.

This week Salimah Samji, Director of CID’s Building State Capability Program talks to Alice Evans Lecturer at Kings College London and Associate at the Building State Capability Program on possible solutions to this pressing issue.

Read Alice Evans' report on Increasing Pro-Labour Reforms: https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/publications/incentivising-pro-labour-reforms

// www.bsc.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on February 13, 2019.

About Alice Evans: Alice Evans is writing a book on "The Global Politics of Decent Work". Through comparative research on strengthening corporate accountability, Alice explores how to resolve global collective action problems and improve workers' rights. She has published on the causes of falling inequality in Latin America; social movements; rising support for gender equality; cities as catalysts of social change; and the politics of maternal mortality. She is a Lecturer at King's College London, with previous appointments at Cambridge and the LSE.

View the transcript for this episode here: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/Transcripts/Transcript-Labor%20rights.pdf

Salimah Samji, Building State Capability Program Director talks to Anjikwi Mshelbwala, who took the PDIA online course offered by the Building State Capability Program in the Fall of 2017.

Anjikwi, an ICT Officer at ActionAid talks about his experience applying the insights from the program in his native Nigeria and describes how the learnings he got from the course have helped him solve complex development problems ever since.

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- Learn more about CID's Building State Capability Program at: https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/

- Download the free PDIA toolkit at: https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/PDIAtoolkit

- Download the Building State Capability book at: https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/building-state-capability-evidence-analysis-action

View the transcript for this episode here: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/Transcripts/Transcript-JPDIA%20Alumni%20Solving%20complex.pdf

Over the last eight years, the Syrian Civil War has left millions of people internally displaced and many more have fled the country to protect themselves and their families. This humanitarian crisis has left the region and its people to face incredible challenges in their everyday lives. Andrew Mitchell, British Member of Parliament and former Secretary of State for International Development considers the situation to be a catastrophe from which the international community can learn many lessons on how to support those in the country, as well as refugees throughout the world.

Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Nawal Qutub, student at the Harvard Graduate School of Educaton, interviews Andrew Mitchell, who discusses the humanitarian crisis in Syria following the Civil War and how the international community can assist with rebuilding the country once peace is restored.

// www.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on February 22, 2019.

About Rt. Hon. Andrew Mitchell: Rt Hon. Andrew Mitchell is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sutton Coldfield since 2001. He was the MP for Gedling from 1987 to 1997. He served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Development from 2010 to 2012. Mitchell was elected President of the Cambridge Union in 1978. Before university, he served for several months as a United Nations military peacekeeper in Cyprus. He has extensive pre-government experience of the developing world, and is the founder of Project Umubano, a Conservative Party social action project in Rwanda and Sierra Leone in central and west Africa, launched in 2007. Mitchell was returned as MP for Sutton Coldfield at the 2017 general election, with a reduced majority.

Following the brutal rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi in 2012, filmmaker Leslee Udwin traveled to India to examine the situation and attempt to understand what led to such a violent attack. She released her documentary “India’s Daughter” in 2015, and subsequently founded ThinkEqual, a non-profit organization with the mission to educate young children in social emotional learning to reduce violence throughout the world.

Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Abeela Latif, student at the Harvard Graduate School of Educaton, interviews Leslee Udwin, who discusses the difficult journey of making the film and how this experience inspired her to begin the ThinkEqual global education initiative.

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About Leslee Udwin: Leslee was voted by the NY Times the No 2 Most Impactful Woman of 2015 (second to Hillary Clinton), and has been awarded the prestigious Swedish Anna Lindh Human Rights Prize (previously won by Madeleine Albright). She has also been named Safe’s Global Hero of 2015, Global Thinker by Foreign Policy. A BAFTA and multi-award winning filmmaker and Human Rights Campaigner, Leslee’s documentary “India’s Daughter”, has been critically acclaimed around the globe, won 32 awards (including the Peabody Award and the Amnesty International Media Award for Best Documentary 2016) and sparked a global movement to end violence against women and girls. The searing insights yielded by the 2½ journey making “India’s Daughter”, led Leslee to found UK-and-US-based Not for Profit global education initiative “Think Equal”.

To get involved with ThinkEqual, please contact [email protected].

Interview recorded on February 15, 2019.

View the transcript for this episode here: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/Transcripts/Transcript-Preventing%20Violence.pdf

Today on this BSC podcast, Salimah Samji, Director of the Building State Capability program at CID has a conversation with Professor Matt Andrews, Faculty Director of the Building State Capability program to discuss public policy implementation failures. To learn more about the Implementing Public Policy course, visit bit.ly/2QAnf69. To read the Public Policy Failures paper, visit bit.ly/2DWoLs5.

// www.bsc.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on January 18, 2019.

About Matt Andrews: Matt Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy. His research focuses on public sector reform, particularly budgeting and financial management reform, and participatory governance in developing and transitional governments. Recent articles focus on forging a theoretical understanding of the nontechnical factors influencing success in reform processes. Specific emphasis lies on the informal institutional context of reform, as well as leadership structures within government-wide networks. This research developed out of his work in the provincial government of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa and more recently from his tenure as a Public Sector Specialist working in the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank. He brings this experience to courses on public management and development. He holds a BCom (Hons) degree from the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

Across the world, people in urban rather than rural areas are more likely to support gender equality. To explain this global trend, Alice Evans has engaged with geographically diverse literature and comparative rural–urban ethnographic research from Zambia. Her research showed that people living in interconnected, heterogeneous, and densely populated areas are more likely to see women performing socially valued, masculine roles.

Today on the BSC podcast, Salimah Samji, Director of the Building State Capability program at CID interviews Alice Evans, Lecturer at Kings College London, who discusses what drives social change, and how people come to support gender equality.

// www.bsc.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on October 30, 2018.

About Alice Evans: Alice Evans is writing a book on "The Global Politics of Decent Work". Through comparative research on strengthening corporate accountability, Alice explores how to resolve global collective action problems and improve workers' rights. She has published on the causes of falling inequality in Latin America; social movements; rising support for gender equality; cities as catalysts of social change; and the politics of maternal mortality. She is a Lecturer at King's College London, with previous appointments at Cambridge and the LSE.

Starting in November 2015, the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab has been engaged in economic policy research with the Government of Sri Lanka. Led by Professor Ricardo Hausmann, the team has focused on a single question: what is holding back investment in Sri Lanka – especially in new and non-traditional export-oriented sectors – and what can the government do about it? In this podcast, members of the Sri Lanka team explain what they learned from the project which includes: First, a lack of new economic “knowhow” has meant that there are few easy opportunities for innovative investors to exploit. Next, the investors who do arrive find significant roadblocks to their success; these include policy barriers to reaching markets and key inputs, and infrastructural gaps at the regional level.

Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Anna Mysliewic, Masters in Public Policy student at the Harvard Kennedy School, interviews Dan and Tim, who share their learnings from the project and how they partnered with key counterparts in the government and civil society to support potential solutions, and better understand the deeper institutional gaps that prevent proactive policymaking.

// www.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu // www.bsc.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on November 16, 2018.

About the speakers: Daniel Stock rejoined the Center for International Development's Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2015. He also held this position from 2011-2013. He studies how countries apply proactive strategies to promote structural transformation. His research focuses on using network models to uncover new opportunities for diversifying exports and attracting new sources of investment. Prior to joining CID, Daniel was a Junior Professional Associate at the World Bank, working with governments to improve the investment climate for local businesses and FDI. Daniel has also worked as a researcher at the MIT Media Lab's Macro Connections group, and a Research Intern at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Santiago, Chile. Daniel earned a B.S. in Quantitative Economics and International Relations from Tufts University.

Tim O’Brien joined the Center for International Development in 2015, working on both Growth Lab and Building State Capability projects.He has led growth diagnostic research in Albania and Sri Lanka. Tim holds a Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) degree from the Harvard Kennedy School and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University. Tim served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi from 2008-2010 and has experience working with the World Bank and in environmental engineering. Tim’s research interests center on the challenges of economic transformation and adapting to climate change in developing countries and vulnerable communities.

Sehar Noor is a Research Assistant at the Center for International Development's Growth Lab. Sehar graduated from Rollins College in May 2016 with honors in Economics and International Affairs. While at Rollins, she served as captain of the debate team, and studied abroad in Cuba and China. Her previous experience includes conducting fieldwork in disaster relief camps as an intern for the Aga Khan Rural Support Program in Gilgit, Pakistan, and interning with the Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling Unit of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Islamabad, Pakistan.

This podcast comes from a panel discussion that took place at the Building State Capability program’s symposium on October 30th 2018. The panel discussion focused on How to Mobilize Political Elites and Citizens? as Salimah Samji, Director of the Building State Capability program, asked Alice Evans, Lecturer at Kings College London, Rakesh Rajani, Vice President of programs at Co-Impact and Lilly Tsai, Faculty Director and Professor at MIT’s Governance Lab, to share their experiences of mobilizing both political elites and citizens to facilitate social change.

// www.bsc.cid.harvard.edu //

Audio recorded on October 30, 2018.

Practitioners face many challenges when diagnosing growth constraints and setting a country on a path to greater prosperity - including navigating the political context and getting good policy ideas implemented. Miguel Angel Santos, Douglas Barrios and Tim O’Brien are seasoned researchers at the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab that have worked in Jordan, Sri Lanka, Mexico, and other countries, developing growth strategies on both national and sub-national levels.

Today on CID’s Research Spotlight podcast, Friederike Strub, Masters in Public Policy student at the Harvard Kennedy School, interviews Miguel, Douglas, and Tim, who share their experiences with Growth Diagnostics in the broader context of the global sustainable development agenda, exploring how they take into account inequality and social inclusion, as well as environmental sustainability, when designing macroeconomic policy solutions.

// www.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on October 30, 2018.

Conducting business in fragile states can be a difficult challenge for corporations, governments, and other stakeholders alike. According to the Doing Business Indicators report by the World Bank, Afghanistan has historically been ranked near the bottom of the list. Based on economic reforms implemented by the government of Afghanistan, the country has seen significant positive improvement in this year’s Doing Business Indicators rankings. Specifically, Ajmal Ahmady, Senior Advisor to the President of Afghanistan on Banking and Finance, identified the challenges of doing business in Afghanistan and began working on economic reforms to improve the business environment.

Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Nawal Qutub, student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, interviews Ajmal Ahmady, who provides further insight on the reforms he implemented with regard to doing business in Afghanistan.

// www.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on November 9, 2018.

About Ajmal Ahmady: Ajmal Ahmady is Senior Advisor to the President of Afghanistan on Banking and Finance. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Master of Economics and Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Bachelors in Mathematics and Economics from UCLA. He previously spent eight years in the asset management industry investing in global macro, emerging markets, and corporate strategies for some of the largest asset managers in the world. He has also worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, the World Bank, an EM private equity group, the US Treasury Department and the Afghan Ministry of Finance.