Here’s your Saturday morning reading:
1) UK Floods.
After the deluge – can we have a serious debate on aid?
Kevin Watkins gives three reasons why the Daily Mail campaign to divert UK aid money to help flood victims in Somerset;
1: Money is not the problem – and raiding aid is not the answer.
2: Aid saves lives and expands opportunities.
3: This is a debate about values, not budgets.
The UK Floods: Policies, Politics and Public Finance
Lawrence Haddad places the floods in a wider development context looking at the difficulty of coordinating across government departments, a rise in extreme weather events and the mainstreaming of resilience.
Barclays submerged by bonus floods
The Financial Times does very well to sustain this analogy for an entire article.
“Ministers had promised rigorous new bonus defences following the great floods of 2007 but their appetite for action waned after a few dry years. David Cameron is now convening daily cabinet emergency committee meetings and has stressed that voters must be left in no doubt how much he cares about the crisis.”
2) Campaign for Boring Development.
Last week I posted this new blog and there has since been a wave of thought-provoking posts including the two below.
Kilomo Salama: Crop Microinsurance for dummies
Alongside the more snarky posts (see here and here) there is a more positive “this works” series. This one looks at what comes next for microfinance after initial hype cycle over loans.
“Next generation Microfinance mechanisms are better designed, less hype-y and more scalable than what came before.”
Are We Helicopter-Parenting the African State?
Angus Deaton’s recent book included a critique of aid that drew defensive reactions. This posts suggests this touched a nerve because it’s uncomfortably close to the truth.
“Facing up to the gory details of aid dependence is one of the last great taboos of the development world. Deaton’s beef is with Western Paternalism: the never explicit, always just-below-the-surface tendency to treat African states like children, abrogating the paternal role for the West”
3) The TL;DR of global development concepts and practice
Brendan Rigby has set up a global development sub-reddit and implores us all to join