It was great to be able to hold a launch event for my latest book Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World: An Emancipatory Manifesto on 2nd June in Accra on the evening before this year’s eLearning Africa conference and exhibition. … Continue reading →

The Chinese authorities have announced a reform of the hukou system that ties citizens to a particular region and fosters inequality. But proclamations of the system’s death are premature, as powerful social groups have an interest in maintaining it.

Rising living standards, shorter working hours and a liveable climate are achievable, say the authors of a new study

The post Radical change can lead to a fairer and greener world, says new report appeared first on Positive News.

This story was originally published by Vox and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Earlier this year, a billionaire investor and philanthropist named Tom Kaplan auctioned off a small Rembrandt drawing of a lion at Sotheby’s in New York City. It sold for nearly $18 million. A press release prior to the auction noted that Kaplan would donate […]

Scientists say dominant climate and biodiversity models rely too heavily on existing economic systems and overlook inequality, Global South perspectives and Indigenous knowledge, calling for more transformative and inclusive scenario-building

This story was originally published on Gabriel Zucman’s substack, to which you can subscribe here (for English) or here (for French). Last week, Jeff Bezos made an unexpected contribution to the debate about taxation in the United States, claiming that billionaires like himself pay a lot of tax and that it would be pointless to ask them to […]

Democracy, for most of its existence, has managed to coexist with oligarchy, but only on the condition that oligarchs exert their influence quietly. Citizens, including ordinary Americans, are generally willing to tolerate the super-rich, but the arrangement breaks down when a small group of exceedingly wealthy people are perceived to be distorting and impairing democracy […]

New research links rural solar adoption to mobile money use, while raising concerns about inequality

Our private and political lives are always punctuated by upheavals and storms. These moments signal the direction we should take. The unfolding political and economic crisis in South Africa presents a rich opportunity to chart a revolutionary path that could alter the future. We dare not miss this opening for a moral resetting of our […]

Lisa Jo Chamberlin, who spoke to a Mississippi reporter in January about her experiences as the only woman on the state’s death row and her allegations of cruel and unusual punishment behind bars, now says that after speaking to the press, she faced targeted retaliation by prison officers for having gone public about her concerns, […]

Affordability is the new buzzword. It’s yapped by politicians and pundits across the spectrum. It’s as popular as a new TikTok dance. And it’s genuinely an important and mobilizing concept. But the truth is, it doesn’t really capture what’s ailing us. What makes this moment unique is insecurity. Struggling with bills isn’t new to most […]

A married couple walk into the distance as cash falls underneath them

With millions of South Africans unemployed — particularly young people — employers wield enormous power. The message is clear: “If you don’t accept these conditions, there are hundreds waiting to take your place”

We are proud of how far Cosatu has come since it was launched 40 years ago in Durban and the role it has played in ending apartheid, securing our constitutional democracy, uplifting workers and enshrining their rights into law

President Cyril Ramaphosa says South Africa’s democracy must be measured by its ability to deliver real, material improvements in people’s lives

The United Kingdom is facing a quiet but profound public health crisis, one that cannot be dismissed as a statistical anomaly or blamed solely on individual lifestyle choices. New research showing a decline in healthy life expectancy (HLE) should serve as a serious warning: people are not just living shorter, healthy lives; they are spending […]

The post Austerity and Inequality in the UK Has…

South Africa’s 32nd Freedom Day highlights both democratic gains and ongoing struggles with inequality, unemployment and poverty

Across South Africa, communities are marking Freedom Day under the weight of an escalating water crisis, where unreliable supply, contamination and ageing infrastructure continue to undermine basic rights and deepen inequality

Sweden’s government wants schools to return to more traditional teaching, but critics warn that delaying AI education could hand better-off children another advantage.

There’s a virus in our tax system. A stealth virus, it was embedded in America’s economic DNA for a century, biding its time, waiting for the appropriate conditions to reveal itself. And then we created those conditions, unleashing it to infect our institutions of culture and democracy, replicate, and burst forth to infect anew. An […]

Development statistics tell us what has happened. They show us how many children have dropped out of school, how many young people are unemployed and how many households remain trapped in poverty

A new global platform maps urban heat at street level, showing how exposure is rising and falling disproportionately on poorer communities, while giving cities tools to test cooling solutions

The Planet Is in Crisis and the Wealthy Are Burning It Every few years the same uncomfortable claim resurfaces: the Earth has too many people and I admit I am one of them. With almost nine billion humans sharing the planet, there is an argument to suggest that environmental collapse is simply the inevitable result […]

The post Have You Ever Wondered Why the Richest People and Their Puppets Deny…

The schools in Steubenville, Ohio, are doing something unusual—in fact, it’s almost unheard of. In a country where nearly 40 percent of fourth graders struggle to read at even a basic level, Steubenville has succeeded in teaching virtually all of its students to read well. According to data from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford […]

Just a few years ago, historian and activist Ibram X. Kendi seemed to be everywhere. At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, he became one of the leading voices on racism in America—and particularly what he described as antiracism. In 2019, his book How to Be an Antiracist became a bestseller. And later, […]

Flare pollution — Wayan Barre began photographing life in the 85-mile petrochemical industry corridor after moving to New Orleans. He found defiant activists, health problems and impoverishment.

The ICT4D Collective has recently launched a podcast channel on Apple Podcasts which contains audio versions of the vignettes in my upcoming book Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World: An Emancipatory Manifesto. The fourth tranche of episodes (11-16) is now … Continue reading →

For the first time in several years, electricity did not dominate the president’s address

For those wanting a quick summary of the arguments made in my upcoming book Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World: An Emancipatory Manifesto, the video and graphic below provide a short summary of its concluding reflections (click on the slide to … Continue reading →