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…
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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…
Tax justice & care
The time tax: Hours already taken
This series has named the care tax — the invisible extraction that sustains households and economies. Now we ask: what does that extraction do to a day? To a body? To a life? Th…
Tax justice & care
The tax no one names
She wakes before dawn. The house is still dark. She fetches water. She prepares food. She readies children. Her day begins before the recognised working day starts — and continu…
Tax justice & care
The tax system treats the majority as the exception
Tax systems do not reflect economic life. They structure it around assumptions about income, time, and visibility. They are built on an implicit model of the taxpayer — stable i…
Tax justice & care
The citizen the tax system imagines
Who is recognised as a taxpayer — and who is treated as an exception? Tax systems are built around an implicit model of the taxpayer. Stable income. Formal employment. Individua…
Tax justice & care
Tax enforcement: Who gets punished — and who walks away?
The previous article asked who can comply and who struggles. This article asks: when compliance fails – or when the system decides to pursue – who is punished and who walks away…
Tax justice & care
Tax administration: Where power meets people
This series has examined what is taxed, how it is designed, and who pays. Now we ask: how do people actually comply? Who can enter the system, and who struggles before enforceme…
Tax justice & care
Who pays? The burden of tax extraction
This series has examined what is taxed and how it is designed. Now we ask: who actually pays? The myth of the taxpayer Tax systems tell a simple story: taxpayers are those who a…
Tax justice & care
How much? The design of tax extraction
This series has examined what counts as economic value. Now we ask: how is it designed? Design decides direction. Tax systems do not only decide what to tax. They decide how muc…
Tax justice & care
What counts? The politics of the tax base
This series moves from lived reality to the rules. The previous article asked who writes tax policy – at global, regional, and national levels. Now we ask: what does the system…
Tax justice & care
Taxation policy and law: Who decides?
This series moves from lived reality to the rules. The first article showed how colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy built the tax system. Now we ask: who writes the rules to…
Tax justice & care
Built without us: The tax system designed by colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy
This series moves from lived reality to the rules. It asks who the system was built for, who it serves, and who it leaves out. The first article looks backwards—to the time befo…
Tax justice & care
The tax system that counts us: Who pays, who profits, who is erased
( A follow‑up to “The Tax System That Sees Us”) We have lived the reality. The market fee that leaves no record. The pension that never comes. The clinic with no drugs. The tax…