Kri Kri on the shores of Lake Chad, Nigerians fled across the border when Boko Haram insurgents attacked the town of Damassak (European Commission DG ECHO/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Kri Kri on the shores of Lake Chad, Nigerians fled across the border when Boko Haram insurgents attacked the town of Damassak (European Commission DG ECHO/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Fortnightly links: Lake Chad, the private sector, Doing Business, and more

By Sachini Muller, Tara Davda and Terence Wood
15 December 2017

The New Yorker has a grim report on the humanitarian disasters unfolding on the shores of Lake Chad.

Facebook will eliminate fees for donations to NGOs to ensure that 100% of donations made via Facebook to nonprofits reach their intended recipients.

Airbnb recently launched a new report and road map that looks at how it can boost sustainable tourism and community development through home-sharing, with their global Head of Policy saying that the platform has potential to support households in emerging economies by helping to cover the costs of household expenses, education and entrepreneurship.

Alex de Waal speaks to the Guardian on the idea that famine is a mass atrocity.

The private sector’s role in sustainable development has become a $2 trillion shadow industry. How and why has this occurred? What does this mean for the future of development and the liberal international order?

James Batley provides a very handy explanation of the new Australia and Solomon Islands security agreement.

If you have no money or access to credit, how easy is it to start a business? It depends on where you are. Last month the World Bank released the fifteenth annual Doing Business report, a global survey of the level of economic freedom across 183 countries. The survey assesses countries across ten indicators to generate a ranking of how much red tape individuals starting a business face. Variables such as obtaining credit, registering a business, access to or ease of obtaining services, and cost of permits are evaluated. If there are too many barriers to business, innovation, economic growth and productivity suffer. The burden is particularly heavy for small business, who often lack the resources or manpower to negotiate red tape. Not only that, research on the relationship between regulation of business activity and income inequality has shown that there is a correlation between the two: countries with more redundant bureaucracy have a higher Gini coefficient.

About the author/s

Sachini Muller
Sachini Muller was a Research Officer at the Development Policy Centre. She is currently completing a Master of Globalisation at ANU.

Tara Davda
Tara Davda was a Research Officer at the Development Policy Centre from 2016 to 2018. She holds a Masters in International and Development Economics from Crawford School of Public Policy, and currently works at Abt Associates.

Terence Wood
Terence Wood is a research fellow at the Development Policy Centre. His research focuses on political governance in Western Melanesia, and Australian and New Zealand aid.

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