Background Paper No. 24
By Peter Jarka-Sellers
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.
Ongoing armed conflicts in Europe and the Middle East and a fractured trade relationship between the world’s two largest economies, the United States and China, mean the energy transition cannot take economic integration and its accompanying benefits for granted.
Special Report
By Raj Sawhney, Shayak Sengupta, and Gregory Wischer
Editor: Shayak Sengupta
By Sadiq Amini
These days, Afghan democrats need a champion, and India, under Modi’s leadership, could be that champion – if New Delhi can correct course on its Afghanistan policy.
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