Development

Watch Jon Stewart talk to Linda Polman, the author of “Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong with Humanitarian Aid?”

Farmers in Uganda have started to use human urine as fertilizer for their crops. They have found the urine to be “first rate” in aiding plant growth, and especially handy for getting rid of banana pests. And fetilizer in Uganda can run $70 a bag, where pee costs nothing! Rose Nabirye, a farmer from Mayuge in […]

Last week the United Nations held a summit on the Millennium Development Goals. This is a set of venerable aims laid out in 2000 and intended to be accomplished by 2015. They include things like improving gender equality and ending extreme poverty. While some people indeed treat them as something to strive for, the goals […]

From the African Development Bank: Tunis – The Board of Directors of the African Development Fund (ADF), the concessional window of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group approved on Monday, 27 September 2010 in Tunis, a UA 63.369-million* (U.S.$ 95.6 million) loan to fund the Nacala Corridor Phase II Road project (NCRP) in Zambia The […]

Read the article here. The majority of U.S. aid is being held up in Congress by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK). The AP found that $874 million of the funds pledged by other countries at the donors conference was money already promised to Haiti for work or aid before the quake. An additional $1.13 million wasn’t […]

Dr. Mitch Besser’s inspiring TED talk from Oxford has recently been posted on the TED website.  “In sub-Saharan Africa, HIV infections are more prevalent and doctors scarcer than anywhere else in the world. With a lack of medical professionals, Mitchell Besser enlisted the help of his patients to create mothers2mothers — an extraordinary network of HIV-positive […]

Check out HuffingtonPost’s slide show of Tech interventions that could save the world. I think the first item they mention, the air-pressure driven injection system, is most exciting. I have a soft spot for vaccines to aid development and I think this could be a huge success. Interestingly, there has also been talk of genetically […]

Catholic Culture says we need more emphasis on men. A quick perusal of the interwebs reveals that Ukraine, Bangladesh, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Finland and the U.S. say the MDGs are attainable. Australia and Afghanistan say they are not. Others (like Canada) are careful to avoid taking a position either way, instead opting for “progress” (how diplomatic). Most New Yorkers have no […]

A visual depiction of the Millennium Development Goals Reuters AlertNet examines reactions by development experts and advocates to the U.N. Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which wrapped up Wednesday, after world leaders adopted a declaration that “promised intensified efforts by the 192 U.N. member states to achieve the eight goals by 2015.” The […]

As MDG summiters head home this weekend, they would be advised to read this excellent article by Nandini Oomman.  This week’s summit on the Millennium Development Goals, which concluded Wednesday, culminated in the Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s announcement of a 5-year, $40 billion initiative for maternal and child health.  While the initiative is certainly a welcome one, […]

I was a bit late to the webcast since I had class, but I tuned in to hear the speech made by Graca Machal. She is the third wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela and the widow of the late Mozambican president Samora Machel. She is the only person in the world to have been […]

Not much to report so far, but the tone has been set by the General Assembly President Joseph Deiss, who says, “We must achieve the Millennium Development Goals. We want to achieve them. And we can achieve them.” The Gates Foundation has a live stream of the conference that you can access here.