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Is Dambisa Moyo shifting her position?
In the FT debate on aid, Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid, seems to be adjusting her position: To focus on the five-year aid-reduction example that my book offered as an illustration of an exit...
View ArticleAbortion by amateurs
The New York Times describes what happens if women do not have access to safe abortions: Worldwide, there are 19 million unsafe abortions a year, and they kill 70,000 women (accounting for 13 percent...
View ArticleWhy Africa Matters: My Father’s Despatch of 1991
My father was a diplomat. When he left his last post in Africa (as High Commissioner to Nigeria) to become High Commissioner to Australia, he sent a message to the then Foreign Secretary reflecting on...
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What to bring to Africa
Scarlett Lion has this list. Her main advice is to keep it to a minimum. Here is our list, intended for visitors to Ethiopia. So apparently zip off safari shorts/trousers make you look stupid. I guess...
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How big is Africa (amazing graphic)
This is an amazing graphic: You can buy the poster here.…
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Thank God we don’t have them here
The Ethiopian Government has been running posters in the southern part of Ethiopia to warn farmers about the risk of tsetse fly (which kill cattle and cause sleeping sickness). To reinforce the...
View ArticleIt’s our money – where has it gone?
Have a look at this video produced by the International Budget Partnership. The video is about the way that a civil society organisation in Kenya, MUHURI, has enabled a local community in Mombassa to...
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“We are all in this together”
George Osborne told the Conservative Party Conference eight times: we are all in this together. This is a powerful message. When 15 million people face starvation in East Africa this Christmas, let us...
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Who says aid doesn’t work?
The Independent reports Bob Geldof’s recent trip to Ethiopia: Though 35 per cent of Ethiopian children are malnourished, and 40 per cent are stunted when they start school, the number who die below the...
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Aid works even if it does not cause development
My article on OpenDemocracy today discusses whether aid works. Some supporters of aid have made what seem to me to be extravagant claims that aid should aim to bring about economic and social...
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Getting deliveries right this Christmas
My sister was sent this card. I thought it was funny. Please do send a goat to Africa this Christmas. It will change somebody’s life, and it will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Or you can...
View Article“Dead Aid is a work of self-flagellating simplicity”
In Business Day, Adekeye Adebajo, the executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution, Cape Town, takes the gloves off in criticising Dambisa Moyo’s book, Dead Aid: … This is a work of...
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Pop singer makes two excellent points on development
I know it is fashionable to denounce celebrities who get in involved in international development, but I admire both Bono and Bob Geldof. They are smart enough to take advice from smart people, and...
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The Kindle in Ethiopia
The 6" Kindle, with a Bishoftu lake in the background, January 2010 I’ve had a Kindle here in Ethiopia for a few weeks now, and I’m lovin’ it. I bought the international edition, with a 6 inch display...
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It is all decided by a Professor in New York
Jeff Marlow writes in the New York Times about Koraro, a Millennium Village Project village in Northern Ethiopia: As the project’s first five years wind down, its ultimate goals remain elusive, and the...
View ArticleTo them that hath … a fifth poverty trap for Africa?
Paul Collier’s last book, The Bottom Billion, proposed that there are four “traps” in which the poorest countries can become enmeshed (a conflict trap, resource trap, geography trap and governance...
View ArticleWhy I am not a fan of the “Robin Hood tax”
No less a scholar than Bill Nighy urges us to support a “Robin Hood Tax” to take money from the bankers and speculators and give to the poor. The Robin Hood tax appears at first sight to be a way to...
View ArticleLalibela kids on football
Will Ross has a nice piece on BBC Radio 4 Today this morning in which he goes to Lalibela, a small, quite remote, mountain-top town in Northern Ethiopia, and interviews the kids there about the World...
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Would you be tempted to steal for 2 years’ salary?
A misty morning in Dessie Sharing marsoup with friends in Dessie There is always a lot going on early in the morning in Ethiopia. The air is cool in the highlands as the mist burns off, and in the...
View ArticleWhat is the value of exports?
I’ve now seen the same annoying elementary (but quite common) mistake twice in two days, and I’d like to knock it on the head before it gets repeated. According to a blog post yesterday by Malaka...
View ArticleHow can we raise awareness in Darfur of how much we are doing for them?
The Onion says that “the majority of people in Darfur are still unaware of how many people in America are raising awareness of the genocide there.” Here’s the video: I especially enjoyed the...
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Development 3.0: is social accountability the answer?
Shanta Devarajan asks if we have found Development 3.0 Shanta Devarajan, the World Bank Chief Economist for Africa, describes in an important new blog post the evolution of development policy in terms...
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Economic growth and poverty reduction in Africa
A perennial question in development economics is whether economic growth, by itself, is enough to reduce poverty. The question came up in the most recent edition of Development Drums. Claire Melamed...
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Malawi success and donor fallibility
On the Oxfam blog, Max Lawson has an excellent guest post telling the story of how Malawi has used an extensive programme of fertilizer subsidies to generate seven years of economic growth,...
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China in Africa – Deborah Brautigam [podcast]
The latest edition of the Development Drums podcast is now online. It was the last one I recorded before leaving Ethiopia. Deborah Brautigam, a scholar renowned for her work on China-Africa relations,...
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Tony Blair on Development Drums
Tony Blair is my guest on the latest Development Drums. He talks about his Africa Governance Initiative, and more broadly about democracy, leadership, globalization, DFID, and his own future. You can...
View ArticleIn school not learning
George Bush famously asked, ‘Is our children learning?’. That’s also the question by Uwezo, a coalition of NGOs working in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Their report published today makes dismal reading...
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Famine and drought
There is a famine in the Horn of Africa. I know there is a lot else in the news at the moment – the awful events in Norway, the US debt crisis, the British hacking scandal – but we need to keep this...
View ArticleAid or immigration?
There was an interesting programme on BBC Radio 4 on Monday night, Analysis, which looked at the following question: The government is committed to protecting the aid budget. Frances Cairncross asks...
View ArticleConservative Party gives up party political broadcast
This is very impressive. Here in the UK we do not have paid political advertising: instead political parties are given a limited number of slots on British TV for a ‘party political broadcast’ to put...
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End of year reflections
The Guardian development blog is running a series of end of year reflections on development, including one by me. Many of the articles are upbeat about progress in developing countries, but pessimistic...
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Malaria vaccine setback: what can we learn?
This post first appeared on the Global Health Policy blog. There has been bad news published in the New England Journal of Medicine about the effectiveness of what had seemed to be the best prospect...
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Migration and Development [podcast]
In the latest Development Drums podcast, my colleague Michael Clemens explains why migration is important for development. In a wide-ranging discussion, Michael addresses concerns about the impact on...
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A season in the Congo
A Season in the Congo has just two more weeks to run at the Young Vic here in London.* This is the first English production of Aimé Césaire’s play about Patrice Lumumba, and his overthrow and murder...
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A twenty-first century development policy
This blog post first appeared on Views from the Center. It drives me crazy that so many people equate development policy with foreign aid. That’s why I welcome this week’s landmark report from the...
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Financing for development – where the treasure is buried
This blog post first appeared on Views from the Center under a different title. It caused Duncan Green to ask this question on twitter, which amused me: Good test for ppl who still see politics as...
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What to expect from the Addis Ababa Financing for Development conference
This article appeared in The Guardian Development Professionals Network on Friday 10 July, 2015. Development economist Owen Barder gives an insight into what the coming five days of plenaries,...
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Addis: A Good First Step, but a Terrible Last Word, for 2015
This blog post first appeared on Views from the Center. The Financing for Development Conference, which drew to a close yesterday in Addis Ababa, was never going to solve all the world’s development...
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Is truth stranger than fiction? [podcast]
The latest Development Drums features Todd Moss, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development and a bestselling fiction author. Todd’s books feature Judd Ryker, an analyst working in the US...
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