We went to see Teza last night, a newish film by Haile Gerima which won Best Screenplay and the Special jury prize at the Venice film festival last year. The film is in Amharic with English sub-titles. The film is about Anberber (played by Aaron Arefe – shown left) who Read more…
In today’s Dubai marathon, Ethiopians had 8 out of the top 10 men, and 8 of the top 10 women.
Edward Barder is a not-very-distant relative who makes fishing rods. According to a quote from the Independent, quoted on the The Edward Barder Rod Company Website “Barder is unquestionably Britain’s finest rod-maker” Personally, I’m for banning fishing, though I wish Edward well.
Esther Duflo runs the Poverty Action Lab at MIT. They do great analysis of what works in development. And Esther is a big hit in France. According to the The Independent Mme Duflo is the youngest woman ever to be asked to lecture at this prestigious, 500-year-old institution at the Read more…
Bill Sonnenschein, educator, civil rights activist, roadie, and friend, died on 29 December 2008. Bill had been a special advisor to President Marc Ravalomananat of Madagascar for the last few months. He taught leadership at Berkeley, which is where I first met him, and helped to run the Environmental Leadership Read more…
Our evidence to the House of Commons International Development Committee shows that donors are not on track to meet their commitments to increase aid, which they made in 2005. As a result, millions more people are living in poverty. The financial downturn is a “quadruple whammy” for developing countries.
International reaction to the new Ethiopian Civil Society Law is hysterical. It isn’t a great law, but nor is it unreasonable for the Ethiopian Government to want to limit international funding in its politics.
Chris Blattman asks us to comment on his advice to aspiring graduate student who want to be an impact evaluator: If your goal is to improve the delivery of aid, and truly advance development, many more skills and knowledge are involved than the randomized evaluation. See here for more. But Read more…
The Economist has a stupid article, Managing the Facebookers which claims that the net generation will suffer int he recession: Once again, the touchy-feely management fads that always spring up in years of plenty (remember the guff about “the search for meaning” and “the importance of brand me”) are being Read more…
Spare a thought for those of us trying to use the internet in Ethiopia. It isn’t great at the best of times. When it went down during the rainy season I rang technical support and was told that “the firewall has flooded”. Apparently there is a single computer through which Read more…