Jean Herskovits says that the Obama administration should adopt a hippocratic Africa policy The past decade of U.S. Africa policy has made some wish most for policies that would “first, do no harm.” A Hippocratic test could be useful for President Obama’s new Africa team at the NSC and the Read more…
According to Iqbal Quadir in the Wall Street Journal Aid empowers bureaucracies, promotes statism, and weakens government incentives to boost tax revenues through growth. Economic assets are often kept in the hands of the state, leading to monopolies, stagnation and extortion. All of this hurts entrepreneurs, who have the potential Read more…
Ngaire Woods on what Africa needs from the G20 Bill Easterly’s new AidWatch blog The Global Crisis Debate in the run up to the G20 (moderated by Dani Rodrik) Simon Maxwell’s reflections on Davos
Ireland announces aid cuts. Value of UK aid falls. Quadruple whammy for developing countries now beginning to emerge.
Here is a very interesting article by Minouche Shafik, the Permanent Secretary at the UK Department for International Development. (For our cousins elsewhere, a Permanent Secretary is the most senior civil servant in a government department, ranking somewhere just below a Minister). Minouche makes two key points: first, social protection Read more…
From John Naughton: The most satisfactory sight yesterday was that of Dick Cheney, looking for all the world like Dr Strangelove, being wheeled off the scene in a wheelchair. The only problem is that he was then helped into a limousine rather than a police van.
My colleague Simon nails the link between the Obama team’s idea of openness and what we are trying to do with aid data: The pitch for the idea states: “We can unleash a wave of civic innovation if we open up government data to programmers. The government has a treasure Read more…
New website from the Royal African Society, African Arguments, with some really good contributors: we promise to make African Arguments Online the site of the most vigorous debates on Africa available on the web.
In the latest edition of the Development Drums podcast, I talk to Jonathan about his book, The Trouble with Aid.
Andrew Mueller in this weekend’s FT writes about the Merkato, Addis Ababa’s market district To wander (and flinch, and wince, and boggle, and marvel) within its limits is to acquire the quickest and most bracing imaginable appreciation of Africa’s industry, its possibility, its genius for improvisation, its insuperable will, despite Read more…