Debt Crisis and Austerity could Worsen Extremely High Inequality in SADC Region
By Anthony Kamande Southern Africa is the most unequal region in Africa and the most unequal subregion in the world. Decades of colonial legacy, corruption, elite power and poor governance have hampered inclusive development in the region as wealth and income are increasingly concentrated in the hands…
Former UK PM Gordon Brown on the Extraordinary COVID Response We Need
By Elizabeth Njambi Max and Nabil welcome former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the Oxfam EQUALS podcast for an incisive interview. The pandemic is far from over. Vaccine inequality rages on. We ask Gordon what he would do if he was leading the G20…
In East Africa, the Pandemic has Pushed Millions out of Work: Here’s what Governments Need to do
Anthony Kamande Out of the blue over Christmas, while I was visiting my home village some 200km from Nairobi, a helicopter landed. This was extraordinary: my village only got electricity in 2017 and an event like this had never happened before. (Even now, as most…
Life in Socialist Countries and the Fight against Inequality
By Max Lawson My friend Olga Ghazaryan was born in 1962 in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, a small mountainous country in the Caucasus, and that time one of the republics that made up the USSR. I have known Olga since around 2003, when we…
Extreme inequality is economic violence
By Deepak Xavier and Victoria Harnett How did we get here? How did we end up in a reality where the vast majority of the most vulnerable have little hope of feeling safe from the virus when it’s more than a year since the first…
COVID-19 Impact on Inequality: What does the Latest Analysis Show Us?
By Max Lawson Coronavirus and inequality; what is the latest? Last year at the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF there was a lot of talk about the impact of Coronavirus on inequality levels; in short a widespread agreement that the likelihood was…
COVID-19 in South Africa: The intersections of race and inequality
SERIES: Race, Covid + Inequality A year after the World Health Organization first declared COVID-19 a global health emergency, we are nearing 100,000,000 cases and over 2,100,000 coronavirus deaths. And while the coronavirus can wreak havoc on anyone, anywhere, there is nothing equal about the impact…
Beating COVID: How Australian Aboriginal Communities Mobilised to Fight the Pandemic
SERIES: Race, Covid + Inequality A year after the World Health Organization first declared COVID-19 a global health emergency, we are nearing 100,000,000 cases and over 2,100,000 coronavirus deaths. And while the coronavirus can wreak havoc on anyone, anywhere, there is nothing equal about the impact…
Doreen Ligomeka, My Friend
By Max Lawson Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam International & EQUALS Podcast co-host Over twenty years ago, I went to live in Malawi. I ended up there because I formed a strong friendship with a Malawian called Stuart Ligomeka during my postgraduate studies. We were about the…
CANADA: Racism & Inequality is the First Crisis!
SERIES: Race, Covid + Inequality A year after the World Health Organization first declared COVID-19 a global health emergency, we are nearing 100,000,000 cases and over 2,100,000 coronavirus deaths. And while the coronavirus can wreak havoc on anyone, anywhere, there is nothing equal about the impact…