Institute of Development Studies

Andy Burnham’s first Labour party conference speech as Prime Minister offered something that British politics has lacked for too long: some serious plans for social care, housing, water and opportunities for young people. These are the everyday essentials that we all need for a decent life, and put together they begin to lay the foundations of a new infrastructure of nurture, designed to help people realise their potential from cradle to grave.

Millions of people are entitled to public services and benefits, from subsidised food rations to maternity payments and child nutrition services. Yet for many, especially the poor, these entitlements remain out of reach, often because they do not know what they are owed, or fear speaking up when services are denied or delivered poorly. Local tribal women sell pineapples, cucumbers, and bananas at a village market in Koraput district, Odisha, India.

Join Matías Bianchi for a timely conversation on his new book State vs Algorithm? Explore how digital corporations, concentrated wealth, and algorithmic power are reshaping democracy, weakening the state, and shifting public decision-making. Drawing on lessons from the Global South, Bianchi offers a bold roadmap for reclaiming democratic power. Democracy is not only in crisis, it is powerless. Elections continue to take place, but their promise is broken.

We are delighted to announce that our MA Food & Development – delivered in partnership with the University of Sussex – is changing name to MA Food Systems & Sustainable Development to better reflect the content of the course. The current cohort of MA Food & Development with the course co-convenors, Lidia Cabral (IDS) and Pedram Rowhani (University of Sussex).

The new Zimbabwe Growth and Jobs Report from the World Bank argues for a major structural transformation of the economy, taking advantage of the recent period of relative macroeconomic stability and new prospects for debt and arrears clearance. However, the big unanswered question is: transformation to what for whom?

Andy Burnham became Prime Minister with a pledge to decentralise decision-making away from Westminster and into the hands of regions, hailing it as the “biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen”. Putting this policy at the heart of his domestic ‘Manchesterism’ agenda presents an opportunity to give communities greater control over local decisions. It is also an opportunity to tackle political exclusion and therefore one of the most pressing challenges: democratic backsliding in the UK.

The transition to clean energy, digital infrastructure, militarisation in defence and artificial intelligence all depend on minerals whose extraction is disproportionately concentrated in resource-rich developing economies. As innovation accelerates in these sectors, so does pressure to expand extraction, with significant environmental and social consequences.

What have we learned from our study, 25 years after land reform in Zimbabwe? Drawing on the research that we have been doing since the early 2000s, we wanted to highlight some of the key findings. Alport Ndebele and team put together an excellent short video offering some highlights. There will be much more in our forthcoming book (due with the publisher in October, out in 2027), and there’s plenty already on this blog site for you to browse through (in fact nearly 650 posts!).

The sudden collapse of USAID in 2025 sent shockwaves through Uganda’s HIV response and the people hardest hit are those the system was already failing. Adam Jan Figel/ Shutterstock.com.

The sudden collapse of USAID in 2025 sent shockwaves through Uganda’s HIV response and the people hardest hit are those the system was already failing. Adam Jan Figel/ Shutterstock.com.