VoxDev Development Economics

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• Armed groups as states: Taxation, security, and civilian support

  October 28, 2026 · 42 min

  In parts of eastern Congo, the organisation that collects your taxes, settles your disputes and holds the monopoly on cigarettes is not the state. Raúl Sánchez de la Sierra (LSE) has spent years investigating how Congo's armed militias…

• Tracking Kenya's tractors

  October 22, 2026 · 13 min

  A tractor can plough an acre of Kenyan maize land in about an hour and a half. By hand, it takes a farmer nearly a week. Few smallholders can afford to buy a tractor, so they rent one. The tractor’s owner often lives in town, and employs…

• Implementation science in education: Scaling what works

  October 21, 2026 · 26 min

  Nearly every child in a low- or middle-income country now goes to school, but about 70% of 10-year-olds still cannot read or understand a simple text. Researchers have tested ways to fix the problem, and governments want them to work. So…

• Is electricity a weak link in development?

  October 15, 2026 · 23 min

  In many cities in low-income countries, the grid fails often enough that businesses keep a diesel generator out the back. So an unreliable electricity grid looks like it is holding poor economies back. In many countries, lenders are…

• The critical minerals scramble

  October 14, 2026 · 26 min

  King Leopold II of Belgium told his envoy in London that he did not want to lose his slice of "this magnificent African cake". The cake was the Congo Free State. Today the Democratic Republic of Congo holds 70% of the world's cobalt…

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