News & opinion

Read more about the latest updates on our work with partners and analysis of pressing global challenges.

News

Featured News

Join BASIC Research at the Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Weeks!

The Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Weeks (HNPW) provides a unique forum for humanitarian actors to discuss and solve common challenges in humanitarian affairs. Between 29 April to 10 May, more than 60 networks and partnerships will hold their annual meetings and consultations to share their expertise and collaborate on best practices to address shared problems.

News

The global land grab is still taking place, landmark conference finds

Major land sales organised by states and businesses continue to cause problems for rural communities and indigenous groups, a landmark conference in Colombia has found. Over the past 20 years, more than 30 million hectares of agricultural land has been sold off around the world according...

10 May 2024

News

Weaponising gendered disinformation across Africa 

Gendered disinformation is being used across Africa as a tactic to silence critics and exclude women from online civic discourses, new research shows. A new book ‘Digital Disinformation in Africa: Hashtag Politics, Power and Propaganda’ explores this further. It is written by Nkem...

10 May 2024

News

African elections under rising threat from online disinformation

In an unprecedented year for elections in Africa, the increasing use of digital disinformation poses a rising threat to democracy across the continent, researchers warn. New evidence shows that politicians have been undertaking increasingly sophisticated digital disinformation campaigns....

26 April 2024

News

UK aid watchdog raises concerns about British International Investments

The International Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) has published a new report on UK Aid to India that it says ‘raises significant concerns’ on the lack of transparency, and governance processes of British International Investments (BII). The report is a follow up to the ICAI review of...

18 April 2024

News

Podcast: Reflections on Development with Melissa Leach

In this special episode of the IDS Between the Lines podcast Andy Sumner, President of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) and Professor of International Development at Kings College London interviews Professor Melissa Leach who leaves IDS after 33...

17 April 2024

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Opinion

Featured Opinion

Exploring power relations among fish and seafood workers in Vietnam

Our food system is broken, and our food value chains – comprising those people, institutions, and businesses that bring food from farm to table – are part of the problem. Our food system fails to provide stable and resilient sources of livelihoods for marginalised people, eradicate hunger, provide healthy and nutritious food to everyone and safeguard the ecosystem. Most citizens, policymakers, practitioners and researchers agree: we need to see transformation toward social and ecological sustainability. But how?

Opinion

Our collective path: the Inclusive Rigour Co-Lab story

In 2021, as the world was facing COVID lockdowns, anxieties and isolation, a group of us from varied learning and evaluation backgrounds—academics, practitioners, peacebuilders—connected with each other. Our lives and work spanned different corners of the globe: Mali, South Sudan, Colombia,...

Marina Apgar
Marina Apgar & 10 others

7 May 2024

Opinion

India elections: The gendered and sexual politics of national development

At an election rally in Rajasthan on 22 April 2024, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, called for people not to vote for the chief opposition party, known as the Congress, claiming that they would distribute the nation’s wealth amongst “infiltrators'' - the ones “who have too many...

Priya Raghavan
Samreen Mushtaq

2 May 2024

Opinion

Moving towards responsible gold mining in Geita, Tanzania

The Geita region in Tanzania is rich in gold deposits, which have attracted a lot of small-scale (and a few large) mining companies. In the past, the relationship between mining companies and local communities was negative due to allegations of irresponsible and unethical actions by these...

Alpha Ntayomba

26 April 2024

Opinion

Empowering voters in India through data and knowledge

The year 2024 presents a global surge in democratic engagement and political participation as 76 countries hold presidential or national elections. This includes the largest democratic exercise of all in India, where almost one billion people are able to vote to elect Members of Parliament (MP)...

Reshma Sekhar
Reshma Sekhar

25 April 2024

Student Opinion

5 + 1 tips for applying for an IDS scholarship

Are you thinking of applying for an IDS Graduate Scholarship? IDS MA in Governance, Development and Public Policy alum Smriti RDN Neupane and winner of our 2021 IDS Graduate Scholarship Award shares her top tips for how to get started. If you have already received an offer letter for the...

Smriti RDN Neupane

23 April 2024

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