Facilitator. Convenor. Coach. Consultant.
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. …
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 …
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 …
Here’s your Saturday morning reading… 1) Why expats? J follows up the much-discussed recent post on “The Field” with something even more provocative: “The idea that aid […] is a thing which at some level requires a foreigner, an expat, to leave here and go there to do is one of the Great Unquestioned Assumptions …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Here’s your Saturday morning reading… 1) In the latest Development Drums podcast, Owen Barder talks to Angus Deaton on his new book, The Great Escape, which brings together his research into health, well-being, and economic development. 2) Jay Ulfelder looks at why 2013 saw more new mass killings than any year since the early 1990s. …
Here’s an early and seasonal edition of Saturday morning reading (because I’ll be on the beach tomorrow!). I’ve put it in order from satire to sentimental. Enjoy! 1) The 12 Days of Christmas – Post-2015 edition! “Three rambling summits, Two dozen speeches, And confusion on in-equal-ityyyyyy…” 2) Santa announces IATI commitment. “Santa notably scored highly …
I wrote this a few months ago for Development in Action’s blog (original here). It mainly reflects things I have found helpful thus far in my career and is essentially advice I give to friends looking to break into the sector. ***** Trying to break into a career in international development? Don’t wait for a …