Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action.

Madina Nalwanga as chess champion Phiona Mutesi in the film Queen of Katwe.
Photo: Edward Echwalu/Disney

• Recognizing that an increasing amount of development policy is being done in developing countries, the prominent British NGO Oxfam is moving its headquarters from the UK to Nairobi.
• There’s some evidence that being exposed to relatable role models can improve performance in school or at work. A newly-published RCT compared the exam scores of secondary school students in Uganda who viewed Queen of Katwe, a movie about a girl from a low-income community in Uganda who becomes a chess champion, to those who viewed a placebo movie. The students who watched Queen of Katwe were more likely to pass their national exams than those who did not, and the effects were especially large for girls and students who had performed poorly on the exams in the past. The working paper is available here.
• The Kenyan Supreme Court delivered its full ruling nullifying last month’s election, citing concerns over the accuracy of the results.
• There’s a free online course starting next week on the science of early childhood development from an international development perspective, including what programs are effective for early childhood.
• A report from a U.S. government agency found that over the past decade, the government made $63 billion more in tax revenue from refugees than the refugees cost the government. The report was mandated by the president in March, but the administration chose not to release it when the findings were revealed in July (The New York Times obtained a draft copy).
  • Over at the Center for Global Development, economist Michael Clemens reviews the research on the economic impacts of wealthy countries accepting refugees.

Links will be on a break for the next couple of weeks—we’ll see you back here in October.