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The dismantling of USAID & the paradoxes of global development

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What is happening to USAID now is an unprecedented attack on global development and humanitarianism. If we zoom out a little bit it is also an almost unparalleled moment to revisit some of the great paradoxes of giving aid, of two things being true at the same time and the many shades of grey in-between. The bigger picture that is emerging, not just in the US, but across OECD donors, is that the global, post WWII development consensus is being dismantled and most of the legitimate criticism about the aid-industrial complex is replaced with vindictive, right-wing politics. I am convinced that very little good will come from this “disruption” and that more people globally will be worse off in the aftermath than benefit from short-term notions of cutting off overpaid Western consultants from the taxpayers’ purse. And yet, giving and receiving aid has always be a complicated endeavor and I am going to look at some of the paradoxes that are coming to light right now. Paradox (Merriam-Webst...
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The War That Doesn’t Say Its Name (book review)

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I submitted my slightly revised short review of Jason Stearns' The War That Doesn’t Say Its Name – The Unending Conflict in the Congo to Global Responsibility to Protect (GR2P) at the end of 2024. Since the review has not been published yet and the situation in Congo deteriorating as I write this, I find it important to highlight the book. Although published in 2021, it provides an important background to the complexities of the conflict and to the challenges of (liberal) peacebuilding and thereby is a very timely book to pick up! The humanitarian situation in North Kivu is dire with close to three million displaced people in the province,” the truce statement said. “The recent expansion of fighting in North Kivu has prevented humanitarian workers from reaching hundreds of thousands of IDPs in the area around Kanyabayonga and displaced more than 100,000 people from their homes," the statement added. The M23 have almost completely encircled Goma, the capital of North Kivu ...
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I have been researching global development for more than 20 years-and I am really not optimistic right now

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The beautiful thing about blogging is that it remains such an evolving, flexible and reflective genre for me. Almost three weeks after my recent post on the impact of dismantling USAID -one of the most viewed posts in a very long time, I have thinking about a follow-up post. And then I read Ken Opalo's post What will become of international development after the end of the aid paradigm? with great reflections and advice on what the current crisis means for careers in global development. And then I read Kristof Titeca’s long-read Ali Kony and the twilight of the Lord’s Resistance Army on Joseph Kony’s son who deserted the infamous LRA. And then I browsed through my archive and found a post I wrote almost exactly 13 years ago, in March 2012, 5 questions for a post-Kony 2012 debate . I wrote: How can we channel the energy, ideas and good intentions of young people into sustainable change for communities at home and abroad? Both the number of viewers of the Kony 2012 documentary and...
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Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality – Chapter 11 – Political solidarity movements and humanitarianism: lessons from Catalonia, Spain (1975–2020)

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Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 11 – Political solidarity movements and humanitarianism: lessons from Catalonia, Spain (1975–2020) – contributed by Salvador Martí i Puig and Alberto Martín Álvarez. From the introduction A solidarity movement is a collective political actor that, as in the case of parties and lobbies, relies on the voluntary participation of its members, has a relatively stable activity and a set of common objectives among its members, who share a coordinated and organised line of action, and the will to intervene in the political sphere, thus influencing the management of a social conflict. Nevertheless, these – and other – movements have some features that are specific to them, such as a flexible organisation, with traits of informality; a transversal discourse based on a specific thematic field (in this ca...
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Global Development Substacks I Like

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The other day a friend asked me about recommendations for development-themed Substacks and rather than responding to him directly, I decided to share my favorite "blogs-send-out-as-newsletters" resources on the blog... For many years a group of German media entrepreneurs has been awarding the Goldenen Blogger and one category they had for many year was "bloggers without a blog"-this is a bit how I feel about Substack and the concept of (mostly) long newsletters instead of traditional blogs. So which are some of my favorite writers and concepts then? An Africanist Perspective Ken Opalo is a towering figure in the #globaldev Substack community-his posts, fully developed essays really, set the standard for long-form post-blogging... Disability Debrief I am so grateful to learn every week something new about (dis)ability & development thanks to Peter Torres Fremlin's newsletter! Suvojit's Newsletter "I currently live in Nairobi, and write regu...
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