Einar Braathen is research professor in international studies at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR). A political scientist, he has specialized in governance and policy analysis in the global South, particularly the linkages between multilevel governance (central–local relations, municipality–community relations) and policy delivery (poverty reduction, service delivery, climate change adaptation). For the last ten years he has mainly worked on two BRICS countries, South Africa and Brazil. He co-edited and co-authored The Politics of Slums in the Global South (2016). Julian May is director of the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security at the University of the Western Cape. Professor May works on poverty reduction, including land reform, social grants, information technology and urban agriculture in southern and East Africa. He formerly held the South African Research Chair in Applied Poverty Impact Assessment. Marianne S. Ulriksen is senior research fellow at the Centre for Social Development in Africa (CSDA), University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Marianne’s research areas include comparative politics, the political economy of welfare policy development, social protection, social justice, poverty and inequality, mineral wealth and resource mobilization, and state–citizens relations. Her publications primarily focus on southern and eastern Africa, where she has lived and worked since 2000. Gemma Wright is research director of the Southern African Social Policy Research Institute, and Southern African Social Policy Research Insights. She is professor extraordinarius at the University of South Africa and research associate at the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University. Her areas of interest include social security policy and the definition and measurement of poverty.