Harvard Center for International Development

This podcast was originally recorded on Friday, October 15, 2021 for the CID Speaker Series featuring Andrew Stern, Founder and CEO of The Global Development Incubator(GDI). Stern continued the conversation with our CID Student Ambassador, Mandla Isaacs, after an appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event. Creating impact at the scale of the problems we are trying to solve in the world is hard -- be it climate change, global migration or agricultural finance. GDI aims to take good ideas and turn them into great solutions -- and ones that can attempt to make a dent in the big problems of our time. In addition to designing and launching new product or service solutions, GDI also creates multi-stakeholder initiatives that bring together governments, companies and nonprofit organizations to solve big problems, such as: How do we build a sustainable agricultural finance market in East Africa? Or, can we create more durable and ethical solutions for refugees and migrants? Or, how do we protect large swaths of forests around the world, with a minimum size being equivalent to the State of Vermont? GDI designs, builds and launches efforts like these and can share some of the lessons learned and pitfalls of attempting to do so.

Originally recorded on Friday, October 1, 2021 for the CID Speaker Series, featuring Dianne Calvi, President and CEO of Village Enterprise. Calvi continued the conversation with our CID Student Ambassador, Maryam Guerrab, after an appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event where they shared insights on addressing extreme poverty and the Village Enterprise model. Great progress has been made in alleviating extreme poverty. According to the World Bank, the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped significantly from 1.9 billion people in 1990 to 689 million in 2017. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that progress has stalled for the first time in 25 years. What does the evidence point to as possible solutions to this problem? The evidence suggests that entrepreneurship and innovation play important roles in driving poverty alleviation. Identifying and scaling up the most cost-effective, evidence-based solutions has never been more urgent as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and conflict could push hundreds of millions of people into extreme poverty. Microloans, cash transfers, and poverty graduation are three different approaches to providing the extreme poor with a path out of extreme poverty.

Originally recorded on Friday, September 17, 2021 for the CID Speaker Series, featuring ​Philippe Aghion, Professor at the College de France, at INSEAD, and at the London School of Economics. Aghion continued the conversation with our CID Student Ambassador Ana Alvarez after an appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event where they shared insights from his research and book, The Power of Creative Destruction. Creative destruction is the process whereby new innovations displace old technologies. This talk will use the lens of creative destruction and of the so-called Schumpeterian growth paradigm to: (i) address some main enigma in the history of economic growth; (ii) question common wisdoms on growth policy design; (iii) rethink the future of capitalism, and how to direct the power of creative destruction to achieve sustained, greener, and more inclusive prosperity. Philippe Aghion is a Professor at the College de France, at INSEAD, and at the London School of Economics, and a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on the economics of growth. With Peter Howitt, he pioneered the so-called Schumpeterian Growth paradigm which was subsequently used to analyze the design of growth policies and the role of the state in the growth process. Much of this work is summarized in their joint book Endogenous Growth Theory (MIT Press, 1998) and The Economics of Growth (MIT Press, 2009), in his book with Rachel Griffith on Competition and Growth (MIT Press, 2006), and in his survey “What Do We Learn from Schumpeterian Growth Theory” (joint with U. Akcigit and P. Howitt.) In 2001, Philippe Aghion received the Yrjo Jahnsson Award of the best European economist under age 45, in 2009 he received the John Von Neumann Award, and in March 2020 he shared the BBVA “Frontier of Knowledge Award” with Peter Howitt for “developing an economic growth theory based on the innovation that emerges from the process of creative destruction.”

Originally recorded on June 9, 2021, after CID's Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) Faculty Director Rema Hanna's appearance at the HKS Faculty Webcast Series where she moderated a panel on making data-driven policy decisions in uncertain times. Hanna sat down with Sarah Lattrell, CID's Communications and Events Manager, to continue the discussion. Watch the original panel: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/node/305111 Rema Hanna, faculty chair of Leading Smart Policy Design: A Multisectoral Approach to Economic Decisions and CID's Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) Faculty Director, moderated a panel of Harvard faculty in "Using Data to Create Effective Policy in Uncertain Times". The panel featured Matthew Andrews, Asim I. Khwaja, and Karen Dynan addressing questions about how to use data effectively in making policy decisions and how data can inform policies aimed towards COVID recovery.

The views expressed by the speakers are their own and do not reflect the views of the World Bank Group. Originally recorded on April 23, 2021 for the CID Speaker Series, featuring ​Paul Corral, Nandini Krishan, Daniel Gerszon Mahler, and Tara Vishwanath, The World Bank. The guests continued the conversation with CID Student Ambassador Ana Alvarez, after an appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event where they shared insights from a new report, “Fragility and Conflict: On the Front Lines of the Fight against Poverty.” Globally, the prevalence of fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS) continues to rise. The number of forcibly displaced people worldwide has more than doubled since 2012, exceeding 74 million in 2018. A new report estimates that by 2030 up to two-thirds of the global extreme poor may be living in FCS, making it evident that without intensified action, the global poverty goals will not be met. The new report, “Fragility and Conflict: On the Front Lines of the Fight against Poverty,” notes that the 43 countries in the world with the highest poverty rates are in FCS and/or Sub-Saharan Africa. Economies facing chronic fragility and conflict have had poverty rates stuck at over 40 percent in the past decade, while countries that have escaped FCS have cut their poverty rates by more than half. Today, a person living in an economy facing chronic fragility and conflict is 10 times more likely to be poor than a person living in a country that hasn’t been in conflict or fragility in the past 20 years. The authors of this new report will joined us for the CID Speaker Series to discuss their findings. Live-tweet thread: https://twitter.com/HarvardCID/status/1385625931725873152?s=20 YouTube recording: https://youtu.be/TzvfcnOLY9s

Originally recorded on April 30, 2021 for the CID Speaker Series, featuring ​Kate Raworth, Economist & Co-Founder of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab. Raworth continued the conversation with our CID Student Ambassador after an appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event where they shared insights from her research and book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. Doughnut Economics starts with the goal of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. Achieving this calls for economies that are regenerative and distributive by design. What would it look like to put this into practice at the level of the city? Kate Raworth will present the core ideas of Doughnut Economics and share stories of how the idea is being put into action in cities and places worldwide. Kate Raworth is an economist focused on making economics fit for the 21st century. Her book Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist is an international bestseller that has been translated into 20 languages, and was long-listed for the 2017 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year award. She is co-founder of Doughnut Economics Ac+on Lab, working with cities, businesses, communities, governments and educators to turn Doughnut Economics from a radical idea into transformation. She teaches at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and is Professor of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

Originally recorded on April 9, 2021 for the CID Speaker Series, featuring Priyadarshani Joshi, Senior Project Officer of Research with the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report. Priyadarshani Joshi continued the conversation with CID Student Ambassador after her appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event where she shared insights from her recent work on understanding how countries are coping with COVID-19 . The COVID-19 pandemic represents a historic disruption of education systems around the world. The Global Education Monitoring Report is an independent team housed at UNESCO analyses and contributes to the global discussion around educational progress in the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda through authoritative, evidence-based analyses; and by convening perspectives from a range of national and global experts. This presentation focuses on select recent contributions made by the GEM Report team (and others) on understanding how countries are coping with COVID-19 currently, the growing evidence base on financing, equity and systemic concerns, and what strategies are in place to try and recover from the pandemic.

Originally recorded on March 26, 2021 for the CID Speaker Series, featuring Sarah Rose and Erin Collinson from the Center for Global Development and Harvard Kennedy School Faculty Asim I. Khwaja & Dani Rodrik, and moderated by Professor Rema Hanna. Sarah Rose, Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development, continued the conversation after her appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event held on March 26, 2021, where she discussed incorporating evidence in US development policy and programming. As the Biden Administration underscores its priority in utilizing evidence to inform policy, how can development practitioners practically do so? How can USAID and other development officials promote and ensure the collection of accurate and timely evidence, and how can they ensure the use of evidence to inform development policy and programming. During the panel, experts will provide their advice and insights on how to ensure evidence informs US development policy.

Originally recorded on March 12, 2021 Alix Zwane, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Innovation Fund, continued the discussion after a virtual CID Speaker Series event held on March 12, 2021 exploring their work further with CID Student Ambassador Sama Kubba. Successfully meeting international development goals in the post pandemic era calls for a renewed commitment to honesty both on a micro level and a macro level about what development assistance can and should seek to achieve. The debate about official assistance is often bookended by, at best, misplaced good intent and, at worst, falsehoods told to reinforce the status quo. Supporting innovation and R&D is at the heart of both an honest development agenda and the clearest path toward pushing decision-making more locally while still being true to our values around environmental, social, and governance standards such as gender equity and climate resilience. Alix Peterson Zwane is Chief Executive Officer of the Global Innovation Fund. She has 20 years of experience advancing the agenda of evidence-based aid and international development as an investor, a social entrepreneur, and an innovator herself. Alix has worked at the intersection of the evidence and innovation agendas from a diverse set of posts. She was the first employee and Executive Director at Evidence Action, a non-profit that develops service delivery models to scale evidence-based programs. Under Alix's leadership, Evidence Action catalyzed school-based deworming for hundreds of millions of children around the world, and safe drinking water for millions of people in four countries. Alix launched Evidence Action Beta, an incubator for innovations in development. Alix has also advocated for evidence-based philanthropy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google.org, where she set strategy and made investments to support new public service models that work for the poor and developed models for outcome-based grant-making. She began her career in management consulting and was a member of the faculty of the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at University of California, Berkeley. Alix has published in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and elsewhere. She previously served on the board of directors of Innovations for Poverty Action, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, and Evidence Action. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University and is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Born and raised in Colorado, she divides her time between Washington, D.C. and London.

Originally recorded on February 26, 2021. Shawn Baker, Chief Nutritionist for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) continued the discussion after a virtual CID Speaker Series event held on February 26, 2021, exploring their work further with CID Student Ambassador Sama Kubba. The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented threat to nutrition. It is simultaneously disrupting every sector that families rely on to nourish their children. As families’ incomes drop, they can no longer afford nutritious foods. Producers and sellers of nutritious foods are struggling to stay afloat. Health systems are overwhelmed, and families are more reluctant to access needed healthcare, while necessary efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19 are decreasing coverage of life-saving care. In December, startling projections of the secondary impacts from COVID-19 on maternal and child nutrition and economic development were released. Shawn Baker, USAID's Chief Nutritionist, will share the latest data on the devastating impacts of COVID-19 on nutrition, as well as insights into how USAID and its partners are using this data to adapt programming and ensure a more effective, coordinated response to address this global nutrition crisis. Shawn Baker is the Chief Nutritionist for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In this position, he chairs the Agency’s Nutrition Leadership Council, oversees the vision and strategy of the Agency’s Center for Nutrition in the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, and coordinates related efforts across USAID. He also guides USAID’s investments and engagement with partners to address malnutrition in developing countries.