Through pre-emptive urban planning the government can signal public investment and encourage coordinated private investment in land. How can land and housing policy improve real-estate markets in African cities? Slums are characterised by both low public and private capital investment and are pervasive in urban Africa. Various policy responses are proposed to create urban neighbourhoods…
LBS students have been collaborating with micro-entrepreneurs in Alexandra Township (‘Alex’) in Johannesburg for ten years, with over 700 MBA students helping 134 entrepreneurs respond to business challenges, but the last two years have been the most difficult period for the people of Alex, firstly with COVID and then widespread rioting over 2020 and 2021.…
As part of the Wheeler Institute Climate Initiative, Lucrezia Reichlin, London Business School Professor of Economics and trustee of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation, recently hosted a webinar on “The need for and impact of high quality globally comparable reporting” on 10th March 2022. The guest speaker was Mr. Emmanuel Faber, Chair of…
It’s June 2021. You are in Manila, and the temperature is touching a sweltering 310C. Normally you would be at work, but since the COVID-19 pandemic took over the world in March 2020 and forced you and everyone you know into a (seemingly never-ending) lockdown, you have been let go by your previous employer. Your…
In a thought-provoking discussion organized for the 3’rd Annual PSDRN Conference and facilitated by Nancy Lee, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, panellists discuss their respective organizations’ efforts and ideas for tackling common issues faced by development finance institutions (DFI) as they attempt to sustainably deploy capital to enact the green recovery.…
“Anthropology forces you to reset and rewire your own thinking process. You have to train yourself to be open to the world around” An anthropologist and filmmaker, Dr Till Trojer recently joined the Wheeler Institute as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow. We touched on his ambition for his research at the Wheeler Institute, and discussed his…
Business can make a difference Climate change is upon us. How can we adapt to it? What can we do? We in the Wheeler Institute believe in the power of business to help society ameliorate and adapt to climate change. In our mission, we seek to understand, illuminate, and support the business community – individuals…
African History through the Lens of Economics: An introduction to African development and history In the first session of the Wheeler Institute’s new ten-part open access online course, African History through the Lens of Economics, Christopher Ehret, Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA and author of a classic treatise on The Civilizations of Africa, gave a…
Customary land-tenure systems, which can work well in the rural hinterland, cannot accommodate the high prices and complex land markets of large, modern cities. There are at least two key institutional features that present challenges to the land markets of African cities: a lack of property rights and minimal urban planning. Property rights are fundamental…
If you live in a developed country, you have the luxury of turning on a faucet and witnessing a gush of drinkable chemically treated water emerge. Anytime there is a drought in an area, such as in my home state of California, the government usually handles it by rapidly importing or sourcing water from various…
