Why sameness is not fairness!
Why treating everyone equally can produce unequal outcomes Few ideas sound more fair than the promise to treat everyone the same. Governments promise equal access to public serv…
One road does not fit all
Why interventions must be fit for purpose Development is built on solutions. Roads improve access. Schools improve education. Health centres improve health. Credit improves live…
How problems become problems
Recognition, diagnosis and the roots we refuse to uproot. Every development intervention begins long before the first dollar is spent. It begins long before the baseline survey,…
What transforms understanding into recognised knowledge?
Understanding, legitimacy and the politics of recognition. I never doubted the value of expertise. Throughout my career I have worked with economists, engineers, statisticians,…
The wrong solution to the right problem
What counts as evidence in development? I am a mathematician. Numbers make sense to me. Equations make sense to me. Econometrics makes sense to me. Models bring order to complex…
The economy the market cannot see
Rethinking poverty, livelihoods and economic activity. The questionnaire was designed to measure consumption. But the people I interviewed were not consuming in the way the ques…
When baseline data carries hidden theories of change
The questionnaire was not the problem. The problem was the theory of change it was carrying. Early in my career, I was part of a team conducting a feasibility study for a rural…
The questions we ask shape the roads we build
Rethinking transport, development and the realities we fail to see Development does not begin with projects. It begins with assumptions. Before governments build roads, design p…
Revenue measures what governments collect. Tax justice measures what societies become
Two series. Thirty-five essays. Thousands of words. One question has travelled through every one of them. Who pays? Who benefits? Who decides? This series has followed taxation…
Where are the services?
This series has traced how women are taxed through unpaid care, depleted time, unavoidable consumption, and economic invisibility. It has shown how tax systems extract from live…
What is not counted does not count
This series has traced how care, time, and consumption are extracted through systems that depend on what they do not measure. Now we ask: what does taxation choose to see – and…
The tax you cannot escape
Consumption, survival, and the taxation of everyday life She buys food. VAT is already embedded in its price. She buys fuel. Excise is already embedded in its price. She buys so…