This paper extends the concept of the resource curse by studying whether and through which transmission channels natural resource wealth affects social spending. Even though the availability of vast natural capital reserves has commonly been linked to the neglect of human development, most of...

In the context of the Paris Declaration and sector wide approaches (SWAps), the need to invest in well-functioning national health sector monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems is widely acknowledged. Regardless of the approach adopted, an important first step in any strategy for capacity...

Despite the acknowledged importance of capacity development to developing countries achieving the Millennium Development Goals, and one quarter of global aid going to this purpose, there is little evidence of progress in this area. There are many reasons for this, of which one is the ineffective...

This paper systematically reviews recent experience with debt-for-development swaps in Indonesia, the only debtor country where the number of such operations could warrant its qualification as a genuine government debt relief and development finance policy. First, we show that the 11 swaps...

This paper starts from the concept of ‘original sin’ to demonstrate that the development of local currency bond markets remains a priority for Sub-Saharan African countries, both as a prevention mechanism against external shocks and to exploit growth-boosting investment opportunities. We...

The question whether Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza can run for a third term at the presidential election scheduled for June has generated a great deal of debate, and it is now creating violent tensions leading to increasing refugee flows to neighbouring countries. It has even split the...

This paper contributes to a new line of research in the resource curse literature that addresses the link between resource wealth and fiscal policy by empirically investigating the relationship between natural resource dependence and public education spending. Using a large panel dataset of...

This paper investigates the discrepancy between the vast natural resource wealth and the relatively low spending on human development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Our results show a robust, significant inverse relationship between natural resource dependence and public...

Fifteen years after the signature of the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement, this paper presents a state of the art of power-sharing in Burundi. Used both for the purpose of war termination and of constitutional transformation, power-sharing played a critical role in Burundi’s...

Starting out as a Large-Scale Mining (LSM) activity in the colonial period, gold mining became more and more dominated by artisanal miners in the course of the past decades. Now, the pendulum swings back to LSM. What is the scope for a relocation and/or reorientation of artisanal miners? We...