Following a G8 meeting where leaders announced a $20 billion commitment to help alleviate hunger and improve food security in the developing world, and a short stop-over in the Vatican to exchange pleasantries with the Pope, Barack Obama traveled to Ghana for his first presidential trip to the African continent. Obama’s visit generated a wave… [Read more…]
June 6, 2009
A recurrent theme in international development is the issue of measuring and reporting aid effectiveness – this topic gets a lot of buzz, and rightly so. Especially in an age of fiscal constraints, it is ever more important to deploy funding to projects that work. There’s a lot of debate about whether official development aid… [Read more…]
May 13, 2009
If you are a development nerd, you have probably read ad nauseam about Dambisa Moyo’s new book, Dead Aid. In the last few months, there has been an interesting debate happening between different schools of thought. Essentially, Moyo argues that foreign aid to African countries is one of the preeminent root causes of Africa’s underdevelopment… [Read more…]
March 8, 2009
I’ve been neglecting my little corner of the internet these past couple of weeks… Blogging can be a serious “monkey on your back” situation, and the more I put it off, the less motivated I become to write. Also, the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of writing and editing at work every day… [Read more…]
February 26, 2009
From the Freakonomics blog: According to this Reuters article, charitable contributions are down in the U.S. only “modestly” so far this year. But charitable giving, unlike the stock market, is a lagging indicator. “That’s funny”, I thought. Because, from my perspective, charitable contributions have seriously decreased since September. If you actually read the Reuters article… [Read more…]
What I’m writing – UN Dispatch What I’m reading
July 12, 2009
1