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Saturday Morning Reading #10

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. …

Saturday Morning Reading #9

Here’s your Saturday morning reading… 1) Have hammer, looking for nails Owen Barder criticises DFID’s new economic development programme for ignoring trade reform, illicit financial flows, climate change, migration and more. “I applaud the decision to use a wider range of financial instruments. But it is disappointing that the aid budget is the only instrument we can …

Saturday Morning Reading #8

Here’s your (bumper edition of) Saturday morning reading… 1) Why foreign aid fails by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson Ignore the politically convenient (for The Spectator) headline. The article admits that aid can do a lot of good, but suggests that changing extractive institutions takes more than aid, suggesting a great role for diplomacy. One …

Saturday Morning Reading #6

Here’s your Saturday morning reading: 1. 40 maps that explain the world from the Washington Post Maps are cool. I especially liked Number 23 and Number 35 (below). 2. Humanitarian recruit  = elitist? from Aidleap “The professionalisation agenda presents an exciting opportunity for the sector to do something truly radical, especially given the current economic …

Saturday Morning Reading #5

Here’s your (early) Saturday morning reading (scuba in the morning!) featuring wishes for 2014, drugs, inequality and South Sudan: 1) Nancy Birdsall, President of CGD, gives her crowdsourced top ten wishes for development policy in 2014 including tobacco control, tropical forests and antibiotics 2) Related to the above, Duncan Green highlights the new generation of …

Saturday morning reading #4

Here’s your Saturday morning reading: 1) POSITIVE: Inspiring stories from South Sudan. E.g. ” A Juba suburb has organised community patrols comprising of Nuer and Dinka men tasked with protecting all members of their community.” 2) NEGATIVE: Goodbye to an ominous year “Though certainly depressing, the observation that 2013 was a bad year is fairly …