Yemen’s electricity sector is in a state of crisis.  This blog by TPP Director Neil McCulloch outlines how a new approach is needed to fix it with a focus on restoring livelihoods.

On 2 December 2021, Chemonics, in partnership with The Policy Practice, organised a webinar entitled “Power shift: politics and the energy transition in emerging markets.” 

This webinar brought together leading thinkers on the political economy of the energy transition to discuss the factors that slow down, but also those that might speed up the energy transition.  Experts from South Africa, Sri Lanka and Lebanon shared their knowledge about how the political economy context affected the nature and speed of transition and the implications for the implementation of programs. 

TPP Director Neil McCulloch worked with the Lebanon Centre for Policy Studies to write a brief which outlines the Yemeni experience following the collapse of its electricity sector and to derive lessons to be learnt for Lebanon. The brief discusses the approaches taken by the authorities controlling different parts of the country to address a near breakdown in service, notably the Houthi administration in the North, who fully liberalized the market, and the Internationally Recognized Government in the South, who maintained a state monopoly on energy production and a highly subsidized tariff.

This blog explore how the UK supported public financial management (PFM) reforms in Nigeria for 20 years, as part of an effort to translate oil revenues and debt relief into better infrastructure and public services. It identifies what made the reform happen, and draws lessons for other PFM programmes.

Laure-Hélène Piron and Sam Waldock reflect on some of the unexpected lessons of 20 years of UK-funded (total £276.5m) governance programmes in Nigeria, in particular how programmes were able to understand their contexts and worked with both state and not state actors to achieving lasting changes in Northern Nigeria.

Climate change is political. The international development system has an important role in delivering climate commitments but must change how aid is provided. Rigid financing models should be replaced with more adaptive methods that are able to respond to complex local politics. 

The Policy Practice took part in three ODI webinars in October 2021 to disseminate the findings of our research into 20 years of UK governance programming in Nigeria. You can find the recordings here:

How does governance reform happen - lessons from Nigeria

Working politically in practice - lessons from Nigeria

Better governance for improved health and education - lessons from Nigeria

Over the past two decades in Nigeria, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and its predecessor the Department for International Development (DFID) have encouraged close collaboration between their governance, health and education programmes. Effectiveness is assessed in terms of whether the collaboration enabled the programmes to perform complementary and mutually supporting roles that support improvements in service delivery in a synergistic way that could not have been achieved by programmes acting on their own.

Laure-Hélène Piron and Gareth Williams, TPP Directors, as part of the Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL), have co-authored this flagship report analysing 20 years of governance programmes in Nigeria funded by the British Government.