Aidnography

Hi all,

Despite the lack of sun in Sweden, this post still counts as a ‘summer post’… 

Development news: The war in South Sudan; failing to learn from Biafra in Nigeria; Aga Khan’s 60 year of slow development; Rwanda really wants to ban second-hand clothing; a closer look at peacekeeping cuts in DRC; Liberia after Ebola; Cash transfers in Kenya; Madonna in Malawi; Beyonce and Burundi, Ashton Kutcher and US gender quality-the special celebrity section! World Bank & ILO whitewash in Uzbekistan; Philip Morris lobbies in India to undermine global governance; coming to a Bollywood theatre near you: Toilet: A Love Story.
Disaster of the week: Brookings Think Tanker runs aground off Crimea… 

Our digital lives:Use facebook groups! Check out an archive of 700 Oxfam campaign posters! Start a revolution!

Publications:Women of color and gendered harassment in science; are women paying a higher price for UN careers? Your advisor’s gender can determine academic success; refugees & voting; Goog…

Maybe it was purely coincidental. Or maybe it was because I have more time to engage with digital content during my summer teaching break, but there seems to be an increased number of well-known discussions popping up that leave me a bit puzzled.

The Fifty Shades of Aid facebook group discussed expat salaries and various expat-local gaps again, Duncan Green revived the discussion on whether and how academics should influence policy-making, the Guardian wrote on volunteer stress and burn-out and on Africa is a Country there was a reminder that overseas volunteering needs a reflective framework.
Add to these debates the fact that a Western journalist apparently wrote a terrible book on his time in ‘Africa’ and mainstream celebrities got excited about clean water in Burundi (Beyonce) and hospital wings in Malawi named after their children (Madonna) this pretty much sounds like any other week.
Some policy debates, e.g. how much spending on refugees at home should count as ODA? have also b…

Hi all,

It's Friday-and you know what that means: New #globaldev stuff and more from Aidnography!

Development news: Immersing with a family in Kenya; aid reforms; refugees & DAC-spending; the inflexible humanitarian architecture in Syria; Australia wants to outlaw orphanage tourism; towards a more equitable study abroad experience; donors & their urge to professionalize grassroots movements in Nepal; are there enough decent jobs in Kenya? Humanosphere's hibernation & the future of humanitarian reporting; aid worker mid-life crisis; what's the big deal about evidence?

Our digital lives: The difficulties of female journalists in the Middle East; over-hyped Fintech; Twitter's glass ceiling for women and minorities; a CEO sleep-over; Tumblr is difficult to monetize.

Publications: The People in the Pictures; public attitudes towards migrants; women know stuff.

Academia: Better networking; morality & open access.

Enjoy!

New from aidnography
Radio Okapi Kindu (book r…

Jennifer Bakody’s memoir Radio Okapi Kindu-The Station That Helped Bring Peace to the Congo on her time as a UN communications officer and local radio station manager in Kindu, DRC in the early 2000s is definitely a great addition to your development-related summer reading list!

After reading and reviewing quite a few memoirs of aid work(ers), Radio Okapi Kindu adds some interesting new nuances to the genre and managed to entertain me right from the beginning through Bakody’s gentle and unhurried style which allows her story to unfold and ‘breathe’ with a lot of nuances, details and space for her protagonists.

Stories from and about journalists-not expat aid work in ‘Africa’
Unlike some aid worker memoirs, Jennifer Bakody manages right from the start to frame her story around the team of Congolese journalists, thereby avoiding the stereotypical pitfalls of a young Western woman going to ‘find herself’ in a remote place in the deepest and darkest and most dangerous part of Africa tha…