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The planet's population will swell by two to three billion people over the next few decades. Where will all those people live? My guest on this week's Global Prosperity Wonkcast has a bold new idea. Paul Romer is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a non-resident fellow here at the Center for Global Development, and one of the world’s leading growth economists. He is proposing brand new cities—he calls them ‘charter cities’—built from the ground up with sound rules designed to promote swift development.

The two ideas at the heart of Paul's proposal are, first, that good rules are fundamental to development and, second, that new cities might be able to draw their rules, people, and land from different sources. He argues that inadequate property rights, legal systems, and other types of rules hold back development in poor countries. If the residents of a poor country could choose to live in a new city, governed by the rules of a well-functioning country, they might benefit enormously. If good rules are in place, Paul says, where that city is located doesn’t matter much.

Can a few brave souls make a difference in the fight against corruption? My guest on the Global Prosperity Wonkcast this week is Nuhu Ribadu, the former head of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission or EFCC and a visiting fellow here at the Center for Global Development. Nuhu is working on a manuscript that tells the story of his four years (2003-2007) at the helm of the EFCC during which he won more than 275 convictions and recovered an astonishing $5 billion in stolen assets.

Nuhu explains the circumstances that led Nigeria to create the EFCC, starting with the 1999 democratic elections, the first in 16 years. The new president, Olusegun Obasanjo, had campaigned on an anti-corruption platform. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks provided an additional push, heightening international awareness of the illicit financial flows that enable terrorist networks and political corruption alike. As a result, in late 2001 Nigeria found itself on an international blacklist of countries that enable money laundering, a list maintained by the independent Financial Action Task Force. It took nearly two years for Nigerian officials to realize they were on this black list and take action to get off of it. When they finally acted, they created the EFCC, a new office charged with cracking down on money laundering.

Click here to listen to audio from Kenneth Rogoff's lecture, "The Perils of Financial Globalization and the IMF."

This video includes highlights from the Center for Global Development's trade preference report launch, Open Markets for the Poorest Countries: Trade Preferences That Work. Working group chair and CGD senior fellow Kimberly Elliott presented the reports recommendations, and CGD president Nancy Birdsall moderated a panel discussion with working group members William Lane and Gawain Kripke on how trade policies can better support development objectives.

Has technology boosted the ability of citizens in African countries to influence their governments? This week, I'm joined by Rakesh Rajani, founder and head of Twaweza, an initiative that promotes transparency and accountability in Tanzania and other countries in East Africa. His organization has made good use of both new and old technologies—cellphones, TV, and radio broadcasts—to expand the ability of citizens to access government information and hold their leaders accountable.

Rakesh tells me that cellphone use has exploded in the last decade in Tanzania, rising from perhaps 200,000 users to over 14 million today. Except for the most remote areas of the country, he says, just about everyone can access a mobile phone. That new connectivity, Rakesh explains, has opened new channels for reducing corruption in government.

Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow jointly appointed at the Center for Global Development and Peterson Institute, participated in the recent event Beyond Relief: Helping Haiti hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.

The panel discussed medium- and long-term goals for Haiti’s recovery, including Subramanian's innovative idea for donors to give cash and mobile phones directly to Haitians instead of routing aid through the Haitian government.

In this video, CGD visiting fellow April Harding describes the private sector's success in supporting health initiatives in developing countries. Harding provides an example of maternal care in India where government vouchers for private doctors provided the additional human resources to lower rates of maternal mortality.

Harding lead a CGD working group to identify how the private sector could support the health goals of the public sector. The working group recommended that donors create a private sector advisory facility that would provide on-demand support to policymakers in developing countries. So far, five donors have agreed to support this facility.

This week, I’m joined on the Global Prosperity Wonkcast by Kimberly Ann Elliott, a senior fellow here at the Center for Global Development. Kim’s research focuses on ways in which rich country trade policy affects the developing world. She currently chairs CGD’s working group on Global Trade Preference Reform.

Trade preferences are a way for countries to offer access to their markets to poor countries, in spite of other import tariffs or quotas that might otherwise apply. Kim tells me that most countries, including a growing number of advanced developing countries, have some form of trade preference program. However, she says, not all of them benefit developing countries very much.