Development

While you wait for the results of the Kenyan referendum, consider this article coming from the BBC today about Uncle Bob: Zimbabwe has demanded apologies from three Western diplomats for walking out of a burial ceremony on Sunday for President Robert Mugabe’s sister. German, US and EU envoys left after Mr Mugabe attacked Western nations, […]

Add this to your reading list: Famine & Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid by Peter Gill. Peter Gill was the first journalist to reach the epicentre of the 1984 famine and one of the TV reporters who brought the tragedy to light. This book is the story of what happened to Ethiopia in the 25 […]

“Misunderstanding on this level breeds arrogance, fear and inequality in our relationships with other cultures at home and abroad…” Read this paper today, released by Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in the UK in 2002. The VSO conducted interviews with more than 1,000 Brits over 15 about their perceptions of international development and aid. What they […]

A bit late on the Friday spotlight, but here we go: the Playpump. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t, but few aid innovations have sparked levels of international outcry similar to that surrounding the Playpump. The Playpump was invented by a South African named Trevor Field, who saw children playing in a school […]

In case you missed it, June 20th marked an historic day in the search for an effective method of HIV prevention.  The Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) announced its results from a groundbreaking study that affirmed the effectiveness of a microbicide  The nearly 3-year study showed a 39% reduction in HIV infection rates amongst participants […]

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/XaG0eYDPutM” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] Feel a little bit better about development aid with this fabulous video about the Millennium Development Goals in Africa. Practicality of the MDGs aside, this is a really wonderful clip. How many of the singers can you identify? I’ll start you off with Angelique Kidjo and my girl Yvonne […]

I had dinner last night with a friend who works for a large international development organization (which will go unnamed) here in D.C. This is her first job out of undergrad, and she was giving me a description of her first week, most of which involved sorting through resumes for several positions in the organization’s […]

Commentary about President Obama’s Global Health Initiative has been coming fast and furiously this month, not least from the White House.  The initiative is caught between a rock and a hard place, with the steady goodwill of AIDS-affected country built up over the last decade and a Congress which is hard-pressed to increase development aid in […]

A theme that I’ve been following over the last few months (ever since reading about Nigel Crisp‘s ideas in “Turning the World Upside Down”) is how innovation can transfer from developing economies to developed, particularly in the field of public health.  So I was interested to read Vijay Govindarajan’s recent conversation in the Harvard Business Review about how Aravind […]

Read Gordon Brown’s speech to African leaders given in Kampala, Uganda this week: “…that the job of aid is to kick start business-led growth and not to replace it. And so I believe we need to focus not just on poverty – but on growth. Not just on providing services for the poor, but on […]

Every Friday, I’m going to try to introduce a new aid innovation/organization. This week: the Peepoo bag, somewhat predictably from the minds of the Swedes. The Peepoo bag is a one-use personal toilet, a light green, biodegradable bag lined with a coating of urea. It’s meant to be placed in a bucket, or other convenient […]

There is a muted but ongoing debate about whether a country can be democratic and fight corruption at the same time (see Success stories). A related debate concerns economic development. Thus, can the undemocratic Chinese government achieve the economic growth it aspires to without increasing accountability? Some people hold up China’s stellar performance as evidence […]