Aidnography

Hi all,

Another full round-up of great readings this week!

Development news: The WHO-Mugabe communication #fail; How cash helps in Puerto Rico; the UN's ceremonial beehives; data risks & registering Rohingya; people keep sending too much stuff to Houston; emergency sexwork; women's cooperatives; micro insurance for migrants in Thailand; UN-reform; Jamaica's anti-queer violence & its colonial roots; working with UN bloggers, NIKE likes robots; Mozambique's forgotten East German history; 'purpose has become an empty slogan'.

Our digital lives: Working with Guardian's audience engagement; will Google/Alphabet take over Toronto? Big data from the South.

Publications: Communicating vaccines; state fragility; social media in Brazil; tech & migrants.

Academia: Reflections on Open Access Week.

Enjoy!

New from aidnography
A few reflections on the new OECD flagship report on Data for Development
Almost right from the beginning of the report ‘data’ is presented …

I just read through the first 135 pages of the recently released 320 page OECD Development Co-operation Report 2017-Data for Development. The first part Making data for development is followed by detailed profiles of all the members of the organization’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) which I am skipping for the moment. Besides a general discussion about the value of annual ‘flagship reports’, the document is an important artifact to learn more about the consensus that an organization like the OECD presents when it comes to a topic like data for development. The report is visually appealing, chapters are well referenced with contemporary literature and most of them provide good summaries of the topic.
And the overarching message that good data systems to achieve the SDGs are important and often lacking is a necessary reminder for the OECD-DAC community.

But as a researcher and teacher I am also interested in approaching such a substantial document with a critical, perhaps even d…

Hi all,

Development news: The UN & the Rohingya crisis; Africa is too expensive for manufacturing; how Angelie Jolie almost had a dinner date with Joseph Kony; Hungry kids don't learn well; a critical review of the WDR; Rwanda stops second-hand clothing imports; inside the shady adoption industry; how Puerto Rico has been screwed over; an art exhibition fail in China; female development economists; art & sexual violence; lingerie from Nigeria; undergrads meet local aid worker.

Our digital lives: The Leila Janah complex; how to win the Booker prize?

Academia: Harassment and field research.

Enjoy!

New from aidnography 
The Lomidine Files (book review)
The story of Lomidine (also known as pentamidine), a ‘wonder drug’ thought to prevent sleeping sickness that was applied throughout colonial Africa in the 1940s and 1950s, is so much more than just an impeccably researched and vividly presented case study of medical anthropology. It is a historical inquiry into the very essence of h…

Guillaume Lachenal’s The Lomidine Files-The Untold Story of a Medical Disaster in Colonial Africa, expertly translated by Noémi Tousignant, has been one of the most interesting books I have read so far this year.
The story of Lomidine (also known as pentamidine), a ‘wonder drug’ thought to prevent sleeping sickness that was applied throughout colonial Africa in the 1940s and 1950s, is so much more than just an impeccably researched and vividly presented case study of medical anthropology. It is a historical inquiry into the very essence of how the French colonial state ‘worked’ and how a socio-political apparatus armed with a hubristic believe in the power of medical science subjugated native populations to dangerous medical interventions. Killing dozens of recipients, the mirage of a preventive wonder drug was eventually uncovered to be medically faulty and the story of Lomidine was hidden in public and corporate archives of the drug manufacturer. My broader aim, however, is more amb…

Hi all,

I almost felt overwhelmed by the amount of interesting readings, reports and articles that made it into this week's review-there is *a lot* of interesting stuff for you to explore in my latest review!

Development news: That Dove campaign; female leadership at the WHO; the power of soap opera in Rwanda; Sierra Leone's husband schools; tourists and Maasai meet in Tanzania; Mali & the complexities of contemporary aid efforts; robots & inclusive growth; new African literature going global; looking back on 18 years of accountability research; courageous conversation podcast.

Our digital lives:Agile philanthropy & sweeping social movements; AI predictions; the futurist industrial complex.

Publications:Social media guidelines in emergencies; UNCTAD's Information Economy Report; unfinished development projects in Ghana; cash transfers & work; gender & ICT survey toolkit; images & NGO campaigns; complexity & policy-making; labor conditions in the S…