Books
IDRC is committed to improving lives and livelihoods by supporting research that addresses critical international development issues. One of the important ways that IDRC and our grantees help to bring about positive change is through our book publishing program, where we share our research results and findings with other researchers, policymakers, and communities globally.
Explore our book collection from the last 25 years below, all free for digital download. Hundreds more IDRC books, published from the 1970s to the 1990s, are available through the IDRC Digital Library.

While the duality of African economies is well recognized in economic literature, only a few comprehensive studies have examined the formal and informal economies using the same instruments.

This book examines women’s economic empowerment in a range of developing country contexts, investigating the societal structures and norms which keep women from achieving economic equality.

Over the last ten years, “open” innovations—the sharing of information and communications resources without access restrictions or cost—have emerged within international development.

A decade ago, a significant trend in using and supporting open practices emerged in international development.

Putting an end to the practice of child marriage became an international commitment under Sustainable Development Goal 5 that focuses on empowering girls and women worldwide. Dreaming of a Bett

Contextualizing Openness offers a fascinating look at Open Science and the democratization of knowledge in international development and social transformation with a focus on the Global So

Scaling Impact introduces a new and practical approach to scaling the positive impacts of research and innovation.

Reducing Urban Violence in the Global South seeks to identify the drivers of urban violence in the cities of the Global South and how they relate to and interact with poverty and inequalit

As the open data movement enters a new phase in its evolution, shifting to target real-world problems and embed open data thinking into other existing or emerging communities of practice, big questions still remain.

In this book, contributors from a range of disciplines and locations investigate the impact of increased digital connectivity on the people and places at the world’s economic margins.