In 2017, the government of Kenya extended its provision of social assistance to the elderly through the transformation of the older persons cash transfer into a social pension which provides cash transfer to those aged 70 plus. This paper examines the process of beneficiary registration for the...

In 2016, a conditional cash transfer programme that had been assisting targeted poor children since the 1990s was reformed to reach all children attending government schools in Bangladesh. Since the reforms, the cash has been disbursed through mobile money technology and a digital database. It...

This paper examines how Zimbabwe’s ruling party ZANU(PF) sought to dominate Harare from 2000 onwards, when the city’s voters turned to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The ruling party’s quest for control was embedded in broader changes to the state, marked by...

This paper explores the factors that shape the performance trajectories of three relatively effective public organisations in Ghana, namely, the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Ghana and the Ghana Revenue Authority. Drawing on an original investigation of organisational performance under the...

This paper summarises research on the ‘pocket of effectiveness’ (POE) phenomenon in Zambia. It traces the development of three POEs within the Zambia context: the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Zambia and Zambia Revenue Authority. This paper shows that the performance of these POEs largely...

The social sciences have long been invested in answering the question of whether and how different configurations of de facto political power affect economic, political and social development. So far, however, a lack of adequate data has made it difficult to test the validity of contending...

This paper analyses the performance of the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) in delivering on its mandate since the organisation gained formal independence in the early-1990s. It utilises a political settlements approach, tracking how the distribution of power has shaped CBK’s effectiveness over...

Uganda is frequently lauded for adopting a rules-based approach to oil governance, despite having failed to move to production after discovering commercial quantities of oil in 2006. This has been closely associated with the political support and autonomy offered to a ‘pocket of bureaucratic...

In a survey conducted in Rwanda by the Pockets of Effectiveness project, the Central Bank was listed as among the top-performing government organisations in the country. This paper examines the political determinants of the portrayal of the National Bank of Rwanda's (BNR) achievement of its...

A great deal of attention has been paid to the distributional aspects of resource nationalism in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, but less is known about its effects on the state's capacity. By unpacking the relations between resource nationalism, legal and institutional reform, broader...