Poverty graduation programs, which transfer assets and skills, can set women on a path toward higher income and greater empowerment at home, but in the arid rural parts of northern Kenya drought can force these women to liquidate their gains so the family can survive.

When I think about access to finance for smallholder farmers, I always think of my host father from my time in The Gambia as a Peace Corps Volunteer. At the time, I was frustrated that he would not adopt improved seeds that were more expensive but that could increase productivity.

When sediment builds up in a hydropower reservoir it can damage turbines and clog spillways. It reduces how much electricity a plant can generate, and it’s expensive to dredge. In Malawi, this is especially a problem, as hydropower provides nearly all of the country’s electricity.

Sitting in the main room of a farmer’s home in western Kenya, Sam Bird, a Ph.D. candidate in Agricultural and Resource Economics, had a rare chance to put a face to the data he had spent the prior year analyzing.

How long should a development intervention run? For a BRAC program for women farmers in eastern Uganda, that decision was made by the amount of funding it would have.

As climate-related disasters are expected to grow in size and frequency with climate change, insurance may prove critical to relief and recovery, especially for small-scale farmers in developing countries.