By Udaibir Das
Africa’s debt story is not about waiting for easier global money. It is about whether domestic financial systems can absorb sovereign risk without amplifying internal fragility – and whether policy space purchased at 10% to 13% builds assets that justify the cost.
By Piyush Verma
Energy need not be a constraint on India's AI ambitions. It can be a competitive advantage. Encouraging data-centre locations that reflect grid readiness and renewable availability can reduce system stress while improving reliability. Expanding frameworks for round-the-clock clean power supported by storage and flexible resources can ensure AI growth strengthens climate goals rather than complicates them.
Special Report No. 9
By Medha Prasanna, Caroline Arkalji, and Piyush Verma
By Dhruva Jaishankar
For both India and New Zealand, their trade agreement represents, more than anything else, a risk mitigation strategy. Concerned about over-dependence on China and the United States as both producers and consumers — and the failure of multilateral trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization — New Delhi and Wellington have opted to bet on each other and bring a modicum of certainty to an uncertain world.
By Udaibir Das
Africa’s debt story is not about waiting for easier global money. It is about whether domestic financial systems can absorb sovereign risk without amplifying internal fragility – and whether policy space purchased at 10% to 13% builds assets that justify the cost.
By Piyush Verma
Energy need not be a constraint on India's AI ambitions. It can be a competitive advantage. Encouraging data-centre locations that reflect grid readiness and renewable availability can reduce system stress while improving reliability. Expanding frameworks for round-the-clock clean power supported by storage and flexible resources can ensure AI growth strengthens climate goals rather than complicates them.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
For both India and New Zealand, their trade agreement represents, more than anything else, a risk mitigation strategy. Concerned about over-dependence on China and the United States as both producers and consumers — and the failure of multilateral trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization — New Delhi and Wellington have opted to bet on each other and bring a modicum of certainty to an uncertain world.
By Udaibir Das
The current metrics of India–Africa economic diplomacy focused on mobilization volume, systematically fail along the diplomatic-financial chain. An integrated balance-sheet framework could realign these incentives through institutional capacity thresholds, end-use governance, and countercyclical safeguards, transforming diplomatic finance from a source of vulnerability into genuine development capital.
By Udaibir Das
For the first time in years, the Budget addresses not just who issues debt but also whether it actually trades afterwards. A new market-making framework for corporate bonds, accompanied by instruments that let investors take positions on bond performance without holding the bonds, marks a departure from India's longstanding focus on issuance while ignoring liquidity.
Edited Volume
By Dhruva Jaishankar, Anit Mukherjee, Anirban Sarma, Mannat Jaspal, Nilanjan Ghosh, and Sunaina Kumar
Editors: Sharon Stirling and Eszter Karacsony
Special Report No. 7
By Piyush Verma, Medha Prasanna, Caroline Arkalji, Erlijn Van Genuchten, and Siddharth Sharma
By Udaibir Das
Global financial institutions continue to frame the 2026 outlook for emerging markets through a familiar cyclical lens. The consensus assumes U.S. monetary easing, a softer dollar and a modest global slowdown will favor local-currency assets, credible disinflation paths and balance-sheet repair. This narrative is historically grounded and internally coherent. It is also increasingly insufficient.
By Medha Prasanna
Without intentional strategies to strengthen energy infrastructure, the Global South will remain largely a consumer of AI technologies.
By Brian Webster, Alan Gelb, and Anit Mukherjee
Shifting the payment of social transfers from cash to direct deposit via bank or mobile money accounts can directly improve efficiency for governments and convenience for beneficiaries. It may also produce positive spillovers such as boosting financial inclusion and empowering women. But do these spillovers materialize, and under what circumstances?
By Udaibir Das
The Trevor Manuel G20 Africa Expert Panel Report reframes Africa’s constraints as a single system of mispricing, debt compression and governance asymmetry. Its proposals for refinancing, collective bargaining and International Monetary Fund quota reform mark the first coordinated attempt to shift power within the international financial architecture.
By Udaibir Das
Ubuntu economics does not invoke moral claims. It advances a structural argument: Africa’s demographic momentum, mineral endowments and ecological assets are central to global prosperity, and instability in the region imposes system-wide costs. The reform frameworks are now primarily in place. The question is whether the political and institutional conditions of 2026 permit their implementation.
By Piyush Verma and Telmen Altanshagai
Mongolia is not just a customer or supplier—but a co-partner in building new regional supply-chains, new corridors and new resource-alliances. It speaks to a future where India is not simply plugged into global energy markets, but co-creating them.
By Udaibir Das
While stability prevails in institutional titles, resilience prevails in policy content. This shift influences the oversight and allocation of approximately $470tn in global financial assets. This has structural implications and affects public accountability.
By Dhruva Jaishankar and Ammar Nainar
Once a quiet backstage function of the armed forces, defence diplomacy has emerged as one of India's sharpest tools of statecraft. From joint exercises and training missions to disaster relief and maritime surveillance, India's military now operates far beyond the battlefield: building trust, shaping partnerships, and projecting the country's strategic interests on a rapidly shifting global stage.
By Julianne Smith and Lindsey Ford
American allies are rapidly transforming their relationships whether Washington likes it or not; these networks can either serve or undermine U.S. interests depending on how Washington engages with them. If the United States fails to reset ties with Asian and European partners, it risks being left on the sidelines of a rapidly changing world order.
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