There is a chain of coffee shops in Addis Ababa called “Kaldis”, named after the shepherd who, according to Ethiopian folklore, first identified coffee after watching the reaction of his goats who had been grazing on a coffee bush. Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee. The Kaldis coffee shops clearly Read more…
Regular readers will have noticed that things have been quiet around here for a while. I’ll be back to blogging properly in a while. In the meantime, I am dead impressed by this collection of very accessible briefs from the House of Commons Library (of all places). The briefs are Read more…
Christoph Niemann at the New York Times offers a splendid visual diary of a trip from New York to Berlin. The first image is below. More here.
Here is really nice animated talk by Dan Pink on what really motivates us. He says that monetary incentives work for simple, straightforward tasks, but they don’t work at all well for tasks that require conceptual and creative thinking. According to him, what motivates people is autonomy, mastery and purpose. One conclusion I draw from this is that there are probably a lot more people than you might think who would be willing to spend a lot of time and effort helping to make the world a better place by reducing poverty, if we did a better job of enabling them to give their time and abilities.
An interesting Economist article about the uses of prizes to promote innovation is a missed opportunity to explain the economic logic of prizes for innovations for developing countries. The reported comments by Tachi Yamada at the Gates Foundation about the value of market success do not seem to take account of the shortcomings of the system of patents and markets when it comes to developing drugs for diseases that mainly affect developing countries, nor to the problem of ensuring access in developing countries for new drugs.
This is very cool. A team of researchers from Development Gateway and AidData have worked with the World Bank to add detailed subnational geographical information to all of the Bank’s active projects in the Africa and Latin America region. This isn’t just pins in a map showing the country where Read more…
We are back in Addis after backpacking through France, Italy and Switzerland on the Tour de Mont Blanc. Highly recommended: if you are interested, the details are elsewhere on this site. I’ve come back buzzing with energy. (Memo to Americans: you guys really need to take more vacation. I reckon Read more…
If you read this blog, you might be interested in this job with the good people at Global Integrity. The post is based in Washington DC: Project Manager – This position will play a key role in managing and supporting almost all of Global Integrity’s fieldwork in the coming years. Read more…
I was in Paris last week for meetings about aid transparency. At the International Aid Transparency Initiative meeting, signatories and the Steering Committee members agreed a very important step forward. Donors comprising more than half of global official aid agreed the details of what will be published under phase one of the Read more…
This is the third post in a series providing non-technical advice about affordable and practical IT for people working in developing countries, especially where internet access is not great. In the introductory post, I talked about the basic set-up – getting a computer and making sure it is secure and Read more…