How can students and community organisers build lasting, reciprocal relationships?
The Reciprocal Learning Exchange Project is a collective endeavour set up by the Muungano wa Wanavijiji Kisumu Federation and students from the Global Development Institute, supported by GDI’s Innovation Fund. Designed to better understand the benefits, challenges, and underexplored opportunities that come about when developing relationships between researchers and grassroots movements, the project involved several workshops to facilitate open exchange and reciprocal learning. The following blog details how conversations unfolded and is written collectively by everyone involved in the exchange. Fore more information about the individuals involved, please head to the ‘About Us’ section of the project website.
Written by Amber Wright, Camila Carrasco-Gomez, Daniela Cocco-Beltrame, Abraham Baraka Danda, Alexandra Molton, David Omollo, Dingling Wang, Ebony Thorogood, Emily Daniel, Joy Winnie Akinyi, Lewys Rees, Milka Sangare, Milly Jannaway, Monicah Grace Ochieng, Saumya Tiwari
Additional credit to the rest of the exchange participants: Daniel Byrne, Millycent Randiki, Evance Okoth, Carren Osomo, Hellen Oyuko, Victor Wandera Onyango, Kellier Akinyi Otieno, Thomas Sankara, Lizian Onyango
Call for Papers: Rethinking the Global Production Network approach for a changing global economy
Workshop to be held in Manchester on 28-29th June 2027
The Global Production Network (GPN) approach was created in a period characterised by a relatively open and rules-based international economic order, which provided firms with the certainty to disperse production across borders. As we mark the 25th year since the publication of the founding paper (Henderson, et al., 2002), the GPN framework, together with the cognate Global Value Chain (GVC) approach remain central to understanding the relation between the global dispersal of productive investment and economic development. Yet, new questions emerge as we see a broader reordering of economic globalisation that has unsettled major assumptions.
The clock that never starts: what I learned working with Nigeria’s public oversight institutions
by Dr Kelechi Ekuma, Senior Lecturer at GDI
Effective public financial management reform in developing countries is usually approached as a question of appropriately reallocating power across institutions. However, the international evidence points to a much cheaper and more practical solution: reforming the submission deadlines that govern how work moves between institutions. In September, I had the privilege of exploring that idea with the senior officials who lead Nigeria’s public oversight institutions. These are the four lessons I took away.
Beyond Partnership: Building Transformative Research Relationships. A conversation with Joe Muturi
As GDI celebrates recent successes at the University of Manchester’s Strategic Partnership Awards, we’ve been reflecting on what makes an excellent partnership and the role of academics in producing data and knowledge alongside community members and local organisations. In this interview, GDI’s Research for Transformation Lab Manager, Helen Underhill, speaks to Joe Muturi, President of the Global Slum Dwellers International (SDI) network and Chair of the SDI Board about the ethical considerations facing researchers conducting such work.
With roots tracing back to the 1990s, SDI represents a network of community movements across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, all with the aim of improving the lives of people in informal settlements. With many years’ experience in building relationships between academic researchers, government- and city-led projects, and the residents they affect, Joe has plenty of first-hand wisdom to offer about the benefits, challenges, and power dynamics that partnerships can generate.
What makes an excellent partnership?
By Louisa Hann and Chris Jordan
We’re delighted that two of GDI’s longstanding collaborative projects have been nominated for the University of Manchester’s inaugural Partnership Excellence Awards. The awards recognise the benefits of equitable collaboration for both researchers and the partners with whom they engage, as well as any impacts to have emerged from the partnerships.
Ahead of the awards on the 7 October, we wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on what makes our partnership with Slum Dwellers International (SDI) and around One World Together something we want to shout about.
A National Care Service needs a national childhood strategy
Yesterday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham proposed a National Care Service, free at the point of need, modelled on the National Health Service. The proposal is personal. Alzheimer’s disease recently robbed him of his father, who did not know that his son had reached Number Ten.
Many families will recognise this story. Cognitive decline is among the most feared consequences of ageing. It strips away independence, relationships and, eventually, memory itself. As Britain debates how best to care for older people, a question deserves attention: when does healthy ageing begin?
Shrinking political space and intergenerational trauma: Impressions from a partnership visit to Zimbabwe
By Tanja R. Müller, Professor of Political Sociology, Global Development Institute
As an independent expert member of the Ausschuss Entwicklungsdienst und Humanitäre Hilfe (AEDHH), the Protestant committee for development assistance and humanitarian aid in Germany, I recently returned from a committee visit to partner organisations in Zimbabwe. The visit focused on the development cooperation aspect of the committee, led by Bread for the World, under the theme human rights in the context of shrinking space and global resource competition. Here I share some of my personal impressions.
Big Dams and Big Ideas: Arundhati Roy and the Narmada Valley Development Project
by Sammi Dé, Fourth Year Undergraduate at the Global Development Institute
I recently read Arundhati Roy’s new memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, in which she seamlessly blurs the lines between deeply personal details of her life and the wider political environment surrounding them. The style emulates that of her novel, The God of Small Things, where individual experiences are again consistently bridged with world-historical processes. As the title suggests, her prose assumes the task of reconciling the Small with the Big.
What Holds Back Informal Enterprises in India?
By Rajesh Raj S N and Kunal Sen
India’s informal economy is often discussed through the lives of its workers: low wages, insecure employment and the absence of social protection. All these issues matter. But there is another question that receives much less attention. What happens inside the millions of tiny enterprises that provide these livelihoods? And why do so few of them grow?
Bangladesh’s Growth Success Conceals Persistent Labour Market Challenges
by Farzana Munshi, Professor of Economics at BRAC University and Professorial Research Fellow at GDI
Why has Bangladesh’s steady economic growth not translated into commensurate labour market outcomes, and what does this mean for the country’s future development? My new book, The Labour Market in Bangladesh: Emerging Challenges, Future of Work, and Policy Direction, published by Routledge, examines this question through an in-depth analysis of Bangladesh’s evolving labour market. Drawing primarily on successive Labour Force Surveys and other national and international datasets, the book examines women’s labour market participation, international migration, child labour, youth unemployment and preparedness for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as well as the readymade garment (RMG) industry. While grounded in data and economic analysis, it is deliberately descriptive and non-technical, making it accessible to readers without specialised knowledge of economics or quantitative methods.