Owen Barder

In which I pedantically criticise Nick Robinson, the BBC Political Editor, who should know the meaning of the phrase “Mother of Parliaments”.

Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, writes about aid in today’s Financial Times: Dambisa Moyo’s controversial book, Dead Aid, has given us an accurate evaluation of the aid culture today. The cycle of aid and poverty is durable: as long as poor nations are focused on receiving aid they will Read more…

The aid industry has become too obsessed with finding the deepest causes of lack of development. Every project has to be catalytic or self-sustaining. This rules out very worthwhile aid programmes that enable people to live better lives while development is happening. We should have a more comprehensive understanding of poverty reduction that validates this as a goal of aid. My new Working Paper, What is Poverty Reduction, has been published by CGD here: http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1421599

Edinburgh University forces firms to supply cheap medicines to developing world: Edinburgh is to become the first British university to help make cheap medicines available to the developing world by licensing research to pharmaceutical companies only on condition that poorer communities get life-saving drugs at cost price. That’s great. Differential Read more…

First the good news.  In its Budget today, the UK Government forecast for overseas aid next financial year is unchanged at £9.1 billion, as projected in the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in 2007.  With GDP falling, this represents a bigger share of GDP than was originally expected. Kudos to the Read more…

Severino and Ray argue that the definition of ODA is out of date. Is this a good idea?

BraveNewTraveler describes the six characters you’ll meet at every expat bar. It’s never hard to find your way there – all you need to do is follow the American music which is old enough to feel stale without being old enough to feel hip and look for a chalkboard sign Read more…

This is a summary of a longer (8 page) review which you can read in full here. Dead Aid should have been an interesting and challenging book. Moyo is originally from Zambia, she has degrees from Harvard and Oxford, and she has worked at the World Bank and at Goldman Read more…

Dambisa Moyo’s book, Dead Aid, has had a lot of attention in the media. I’ll post my own, excessively long review of the book here on the blog.  In the meantime, here are some other reviews: Broadly unsympathetic My review Adekeye Adebajo in Business Day Michael Clemens in Finance And Read more…

AidWatch lay in to British Government aid for giving financial support directly to governments. They have got their facts wrong, and their arguments are knee jerk reactions. They should do a proper analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of budget support.