Owen Barder

Nominations for the head of the World Bank have now closed, and there are three candidates: Jim Kim, nominated by the United States; President of Dartmouth College, former head of HIV at the World Health Organization, and a founder of Partners in Health; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, nominated by Nigeria, South Africa Read more…

This Doonesbury cartoon is causing some American newspapers either not to run the series, or to move them to the op-ed pages.

A disarmingly simple but effective way to put more pressure on illegitimate regimes: declare that any future contracts will not be enforceable against their successors.

A concern about a World Bank deal with Google: once any data goes in to Google Map Maker, it all becomes the property of Google.

I spoke at student-led conference on international development at Oxford University last night. When I was a student at Oxford, the international development group, Third World First, used to meet in a small cafe on the Cowley Road. Last night hundreds of students filled the lecture hall at the business Read more…

In the latest episode of Development Drums, I talk to author Tim Harford. Known to readers of the Financial Times as The Undercover Economist, Tim’s latest book Adapt is a magnificent explanation of how complex systems emerge through a process of trial and error. In Development Drums, Tim and I focus Read more…

People who talk about ‘the results agenda’ in aid mean at least four different things. The differences might be important.

The Guardian development blog is running a series of end of year reflections on development, including one by me. Many of the articles are upbeat about progress in developing countries, but pessimistic about the short term economic prospects for the industrialised world and for global cooperation to tackle shared global problems.

The series so far includes:

• Duncan Green from Oxfam, who contrasts progress in developing countries over the last year with the gloom of the ‘formerly rich’ countries of the G-8.
• Calestous Juma from Harvard, who identifies regional integration and better links with the diaspora as key drivers of Africa’s growth.
• Shanta Devarajan from the World Bank, who is cautiously optimistic, especially in the light  of increased demand by Africans for their governments to be accountable.
• Linda Raftree from Plan, who also emphasizes progress towards more inclusive and open societies.
• Kevin Watkins from Brookings and UNESCO, calling for “a properly financed global fund for education like those that have delivered such striking results in the health sector“.
• Jonathan Glennie from ODI and the Guardian, who is pessimistic about the prospects for international cooperation in the face of rising protectionism and nationalism as a result of poor economic prospects in the US and Europe.
• and my contribution, reproduced below, which gives a positive account of progress in many countries in Africa over the past year, and emphasizes the importance for developing countries of better global decision-making.

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“In years to come, I expect that we will look back on the Busan agreement as a reflection of changing realities, including the growing range of different kinds of donors and shifting geopolitical power.  I think it less likely that we will look back on Busan as having done much to shape those realities.”

Dilbert cartoon on people who fly to meetings instead of using video conferencing.