Local Data, International Impact

Rakesh Rajani on the Center for Global Development podcast.

Development policy should use rigorous, representative evidence to improve people's lives. But where that evidence comes from, how it's collected, who is represented, and how it's shared are all key questions that have at times become contentious, generating important conversations in the field about the decolonization of research and policymaking in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). 

The World Bank’s World Development Reports are the institution’s flagship reports and they typically focus on data shaped and produced internally within the institution. But in 2018, the World Bank's World Development Report on education made a striking departure from this norm in centering on data shaped and collected by two LMIC-based nonprofit organizations, India’s Pratham and Twaweza, an education-focused nonprofit in East Africa, through its Uwezo learning assessments. The 2018 World Development Report and, by extension, these data have gone on to influence global discourse, research, and policy in a way that few research reports have. 

For this episode of the CGD Podcast, I invited Rakesh Rajani, Tanzanian civil society leader and founder of Twaweza, and Halsey Rogers, a lead economist with the World Bank's Education Global Practice and a co-director of that 2018 World Development Report, to join me in discussing the importance and impact of centering local narratives and data for the quality and validity of development policymaking.

First, Rakesh reflects on the origins of Twaweza and Uwezo and how they became influential. Then, Halsey shares some of the Bank's motivations and considerations in anchoring the 2018 report in locally produced data. Together, I hope these conversations shed light on how partnerships between international actors and local institutions can have outsize impact on policy worldwide.

Listen to the podcast.