December 2025

Digital Payments and Women’s Empowerment: Insights from PESP in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Digital Payments and Women’s Empowerment: Insights from PESP in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

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?

Trevor Manuel report: Africa’s post-G20 Bretton Woods moment?

Trevor Manuel report: Africa’s post-G20 Bretton Woods moment?

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.