“Sending money home to friends and family in ten Pacific countries will be cheaper for ANZ customers from today”, read the announcement, boasting that the bank had “announced the temporary waiver of its $7 international money transfer fee for online foreign currency payments made from Australia and...
Category - The private sector and development
Australia moves closer to a DFI
Going back almost a decade now, several prominent national and international development thinkers have urged Australia to set up a Development Finance Institution (DFI) to support the private sector in our region. The first to do so was former World Bank Vice President for Asia and the Pacific Jim...
Inclusive business: a critique
In the era of COVID-19, development organisations from the International Institute for Environment and Development to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) are pushing for inclusive business to be the ‘new normal’. With the International Labor Organisation estimating that relative poverty is set to...
The time for bamboo is now: how ready is Timor-Leste?
Bamboo is an amazingly versatile plant. Like timber it can be used for building homes and furniture, but is stronger and easier to produce. Like forests, bamboo groves can mitigate emissions and protect soil from erosion, but can grow to maturity in as little as five years. Although used for a...
The endgame for COVID-19 has no end: thinking through your pivot...
As the impacts of COVID-19 play out across the region, countries are frantically trying to prepare...
Job quality, FDI and institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa
Although Africa still lags other developing regions in terms of FDI inflows, its capacity to...
What’s missing in the facilities debate
Both facilities themselves and debates on their effectiveness have proliferated in recent years...
Fortnightly links: IDPs in Nigeria, right-wing nationalism and...
A group of internally displaced persons in Auta Balefi, Nigeria have built a market and a future...
The Efic reform bill: maximising Australian benefits even to the...
Labor has now announced that it will be supporting the Coalition in voting for the Efic Amendment...
Blockchain for development
The world is undergoing continuous change, with peaks of dramatic leaps. Ignoring for a moment...