Even if you ARE part of government, evidence-based policy change is hard. It takes strategy, patience, and courage. I have had the privilege of collaborating with researchers at South Africa’s Department of Basic Education (DBE) for over a decade, iteratively experimenting with ways to improve foundational literacy. At a recent Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) panel, my long-time collaborator Nompumelelo (Mpumi) Mohohlwane, the new Director for Reading there, offered insights on how evidence-based change actually happens from inside government. What follows draws on her remarks — along with reflections from Stephen Taylor, who leads the DBE’s Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation unit and this research program. ...

This year’s Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) 2026 Conference at the University of Oxford brought together ~200 papers spanning agriculture, health, gender, climate, finance, and more, covering research in 33 African countries. Here is a roundup of what was presented, with one-line summaries and links to the papers. The Big Picture African representation What I love about CSAE is the African representation. I don’t know another economics conference where you can chat with people from across the continent over a single lunch. To measure this, I tried two approaches. First, I used AI to identify each speaker’s country of residence based on their primary affiliation. For global organizations like the World Bank, I assumed headquarters. By this measure, only about a quarter of speakers reside in Africa — though they come from 16 different African countries. The majority still come from the UK, Europe, and the US. ...