Alanna Shaikk writes about the good and bad of working in international development. Here is a big part of the bad: … You’re a bureaucrat. An awful lot of every expat’s job involves paperwork. Most people picture international work as feeding hungry people, providing health care to refugees, or building Read more…
Chris Blattman and Bernd Beber are looking at the economics of child soldiering. Why do rebel armies, such as the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda, recruit adolescents? According to Blattman and Beber, because younger children are ineffective soldiers; and adults are too difficult to indoctrinate. Chris Blattman has this graph Read more…
The third edition of the development podcast, Development Drums, is now online.
This week’s guests, Ngaire Woods and David Roodman, discuss the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries, and on proposals to reform international institutions.
So help me I’ve read some rubbish in the Daily Mail over the years – and I know it to be a potent brew of prejudice and lies. But this article must rank in the top-ten for stupidity. The headline – “A heart rending dispatch from Ethiopia” – seemed promising. Read more…
Ray Fisman writing in Slate asks whether falling commodities prices cause civil wars in commodity-rich countries: To reduce violence in Colombia and other commodities-rich countries, care has to be taken to recognize how fluctuating prices actually affect the situation on the ground. If lower coffee prices drive poor farmers to desperation, Read more…
Read this first (Allana Shaikh): Don’t do it. You’re not going to think of a solution no one else has, your approach is not as innovative as you think it is, and raising money is going to be impossible. You will have no economy of scale, your overhead will be Read more…
The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network has a new website. This is a coalition of American thinkers who are campaigning for change in the way that US foreign assistance is provided. They are asking for the following changes: Core Principles for Modernizing U.S. Foreign Assistance: Elevate global development as a national Read more…
Today is World Food Day. There are 967 million people living below the hunger line. In one of DFID’s splendid new blogs, Howard Taylor, Head of DFID Ethiopia , emphasizes the need for greater agricultural production: In the long-term, development assistance needs to prioritise agricultural growth and productivty, if we’re Read more…
Because everyone is so concerned with the financial situation, little attention has been paid to the other aspects of the World Bank and IMF meetings last weekend. The Development Committee Communique says: An additional Board seat for sub Saharan Africa on the Bank’s Board will be created. DTC voting shares Read more…
Every time I have suggested things you might do differently, I have been told that this is impossible as you are under an obligation to pursue the interests of your shareholders. Now that I am – unexpectedly – one of your shareholders, I expect you’d like to know what I would like you to do. Here are seven new instructions to be getting on with.