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 Dhruva Jaishankar
As the Ukraine war enters its second year, US efforts mark a good return on investment from the point of view of national security. But over the next year, further risks abound.
By Ammar Nainar
Drawing from a deep pool of military expertise, New Delhi is expanding its foreign affairs capacity.
The focus of this issue of the U.S.-India Energy Monitor is hydrogen in the United States and India.
Special Report
By Shayak Sengupta, Medha Prasanna, and Peter Jarka-Sellers
By Anit Mukherjee, Alan Gelb, and Brian Webster
This study considers the experience of the mothers with the shift to mobile money, and to the change in payments service provider that took place in 2019, through a survey of recipients and a control group.
By Sadiq Amini
If China’s Afghanistan policy is anything to go by, it is clear that it is not yet ready to wear the title of regional power, much less global power.
Observer Research Foundation America, 1100 17th St. NW, Suite 501, Washington DC 20036 USA
