Technology

№ 2026-65 · October 2026 · 22 min

The Global Polycrisis and the Architecture of Systemic Risk

Multi-domain shock years rose from about 6% of countries a year before 2020 to 9% since, after 33% in 2020. The observed network has a sink: economic shocks, internet shutdowns and governance shocks raise the next year's risk of displacement or mortality shocks 2.5, 2.0 and 1.6 times. Low-income countries carry eleven times the multi-domain burden of rich ones, and twenty countries with 705 million people face a 30% or higher modelled risk of multi-domain shocks in 2026.

№ 2026-44 · October 2026 · 18 min

Digital Infrastructure as a Resilience Multiplier in Crisis-Prone Developing Economies

Digital rails speed up crisis response — India, Brazil and Pakistan paid emergency cash within 7–8 days in 2020 — but they do not replace a capable state. Across 207 shocks since 1991 and the COVID recession, government effectiveness predicts recovery far better than internet use. The exception is telling: where governance is weak, every 10 extra points of account ownership before COVID went with about 7 percentage-point-years less lost output by 2023. Digital infrastructure multiplies thin state capacity most.

№ 2026-33 · October 2026 · 17 min

S-Curves Against the Clock

Electric-car sales are on an S-curve that takes them from 10% to 90% in about ten years, and solar power in about seventeen, but the energy system's low-carbon share is moving at a pace that would take 170 years. A transparent race model shows that keeping peak warming below 2°C needs the whole system to move at roughly wind's pace, and below 1.7°C at solar's. The budget for 1.5°C runs out around 2028 on every path.

№ 2026-30 · October 2026 · 18 min

The Infrastructure of Sustainable Economic Convergence

Across 110 economies that started the century below half the OECD's income, starting poorer did not mean growing faster. Among countries with similar access to power and similar outage rates, poorer ones caught up about a percentage point a year faster for each halving of starting income. Mapping catch-up growth since 2000 against electricity, logistics, cooling and connectivity shows power as the binding gate and the others as multipliers that depend on it.

№ 2026-29 · October 2026 · 17 min

The Global South Resilience Stack

Internet use has exceeded electricity access by more than five points in only 10 of 3,072 country-years across the Global South, and health coverage has rarely passed 60 before electricity reaches 90 per cent. Yet health is the slowest layer to build. On current trends only 28 of 129 low- and middle-income countries reach universal energy, water, health and digital access by 2050. Their data shows the order in which to build.

№ 2026-19 · September 2026 · 23 min

From Payments to Power

Mobile payments connect households to pay-as-you-go solar, but digital collection alone does not make an energy portfolio bankable. This report examines the infrastructure, contract economics and financing structures that turn small payments into durable energy access.

№ 2026-18 · September 2026 · 21 min

Convergence Without Absorption

Half of developing economies have not narrowed the income gap since 2019. The pathways now proposed in manufacturing's place — digital services, agro-processing, green industry, minerals — are tradable and productive, and they absorb a fraction of the labour. That splits convergence into measures that used to move together.

№ 2026-16 · September 2026 · 20 min

Convergence Through Crisis

Pakistan imported 17 GW of solar panels in a single year. South Africa's rooftops went from under 1 GW to over 7 GW. Lebanon's solar capacity rose thirteenfold. None of these were planned transitions; all followed a crisis that made the incumbent unaffordable or unavailable. This report asks what determines whether such a window produces a leapfrog or a diesel generator.

№ 2026-09 · September 2026 · 19 min

Scaling Low-Cost Adaptation Technologies Across Climate-Vulnerable Developing Economies

Cheap adaptation technologies with strong measured returns are distributed and then abandoned. The usual explanations blame the money or the country, but neither accounts for two technologies diffusing at wildly different rates through the same channel. Five attributes of the product explain most of the variation.

№ 2026-02 · September 2026 · 23 min

Scaling Climate Adaptation Through Development Finance and Technology Diffusion

The resilience gap is usually described as a shortage of money. It is better understood as two gaps wearing one name — hard adaptation blocked at a capital gate, soft adaptation blocked at a delivery gate — and neither closes while both are treated as the first.