Links & Contents I Liked 471

Hi all,

A great week of teaching is coming to its close-colleagues from Brazil, the US, Pakistan, the Netherlands & Finland joined us virtually in our Glocal Classroom in Sweden together with many students from more than 15 countries! 

How to maintain 'hope' in #globaldev studies teaching is addressed in one of this week's posts; but among hope & bright spots, this week's review is not entirely optimistic-aid to Syria, the impact of flooding on Pakistan or the impact of the rush to leave Haiti on children are just some of the stories; and what happened to the eHealth revolution, used cars or trade in donkeys in Africa?

My quotes of the week
The estimated correction required to account for armed conflict is substantial – expected national income is 25 per cent lower on average by the end of the century across countries when taking conflict into account.
Strong regional patterns in countries with multiple conflicts are projected to experience much higher conflict burdens and reduced economic growth by the end of the century. Countries such as Afghanistan, Niger, Yemen and the Philippines are projected to lose 50 to 70 per cent of their potential income over the next 80 years.
(Bias in Economic Models Ignores the Impact of War in Poor Nations)

The solution is having a government that is committed to ensuring the health of all of society. One that provides activists and communities with a voice that is equal to, or exceeds, the voice of industries within government. One that has no fear of taking on the powerful industries and creating regulations that protect vulnerable populations – especially children and the poor – over the interests of major corporations.
(Junk food companies say they're trying to do good. A new book raises doubts)

Development news
Why is UN aid so slow to reach Syrian earthquake survivors?

As the death toll rises and more days pass with thousands of survivors trying to find shelter in freezing temperatures in earthquake-hit (and war-ravaged) northwest Syria, many people are asking a simple question: Why can’t the UN send aid straight into the region from wherever it wants?

Annie Slemrod for the New Humanitarian shares insights & further readings to approach the 'simple question'...

Top WHO scientist suspended amid claims of ‘misogynistic p---ing circle’

Emails seen by the Telegraph show that these cases were passed onto at least three different investigators at various points.
“By the time we got to 26 August 2021, they said [in an email] they still hadn’t done an investigation – even though they’d known about it for 18 months. Which is complete madness,” one person said.
Then, almost two years after complaints were first made, Dr Barbeschi was finally put on leave. Investigators told a witness in November 2021 that he had been removed from managing anyone much sooner, but he’d been put on administrative leave more recently.
As of January 2023, four years after complaints were officially made, those involved have been told the investigation is still ongoing – and only gained this information after chasing WHO officials.

Sarah Newey & Samuel Lovett for the Telegraph with an all-too-familiar story of how large (UN) organizations struggle to deal with misconduct allegations & investigations.

In October, an extremely badass woman tweeted about something terrible.

Did she expect the 🌊that followed? I don't know. But now 10+ women have come fwd- there's safety in numbers.

How much pain must be shown to be believed? To say no more? 🧵1/https://t.co/UhrUzxbbNJ

— Melissa Barber \ MelissaBarber@mstdn.social (@mellabarb) February 8, 2023

Passport rush blamed on US policy stalls adoptions in Haiti

Dozens of children are stuck in orphanages across Haiti, unable to leave the increasingly volatile country and start new lives with adoptive parents because a U.S. policy change has unleashed a rush for passports at Haiti’s main immigration office.

Danica Coto for AP News; the story has a bit of an odd framing, 'blaming' ordinary Haitians somehow for getting passports to leave the country; transnational adoptions are also always a tricky topic & the image AP chose for the article appears to me more 'white savior' than legitimate humanitarianism...but adoptions are always a very, very sensitive issues...

‘God, come help us’: Pakistan families still hungry and homeless six months after floods

For many, going back to dilapidated homes surrounded by stagnant water has been preferable to living by the side of a road or in the camp. Others have put up tents in the grounds of what were once their homes.
Ghulam Rasool, a labourer in his 70s, returned to his village from the camp in Dadu in December. He found his house still surrounded by flood water. Metal support posts from the roof had been stolen. He used cattle dung and plastic that was floating in the water to patch up the roof.

Shah Meer Baloch for the Guardian; unfortunately, we are likely to read similar stories from Northern Syria in six months' time...given Pakistan's low state capacity I honestly wonder how the much-discussed climate reparation fund would change this, because just giving the government money won't mean it trickles down to local villagers in affected areas...

Should Australia slash its multilateral aid?

Multilateral organisations have their strengths and weaknesses. But they are not a homogeneous group. And they aren’t all the UN. On average, NGOs don’t obviously outperform them in delivering Australian aid either.
Those are the basic facts. But you won’t learn any of them from World Vision’s submission. I can see why people were emailing angrily.

Terence Wood for the DevPolicy Blog on World Vision Australia's UN-bashing.

Junk food companies say they're trying to do good. A new book raises doubts

Junk food politics is a two-way street. It's when [junk food] industries influence politics and society so they can avoid regulations that will impact their profitability, such as taxes on junk foods and regulations on marketing and sales.
We often think industry is to blame. But governments are also to blame [because political leaders partner with industry on their own political agendas – which gives industry clout to undermine policies that would cut their profits].
(...)
The solution is having a government that is committed to ensuring the health of all of society. One that provides activists and communities with a voice that is equal to, or exceeds, the voice of industries within government. One that has no fear of taking on the powerful industries and creating regulations that protect vulnerable populations – especially children and the poor – over the interests of major corporations.

Pien Huang talks to Eduardo J. Gómez about his new book for NPR Goats & Soda.

Be careful about one-dimensional narratives that purport to be about Africa, but are in fact about US and Western competition with Russia and China.

— Judah Grunstein (@Judah_Grunstein) February 8, 2023

Ten challenges facing humanitarians: a message from Hesham Youssef, ALNAP’s new Chair

A huge proportion of humanitarian crises have political causes, yet humanitarian response must be apolitical. Polarisation, populism, and anti-refugee or anti-immigration sentiments have made this much more challenging. Ukrainian refugees must be supported, but the way many Western countries reversed their refugee policies spoke volumes about what can be achieved when there is political will. Refugees from other regions who are equally deserving of protection and assistance have not been welcomed in the same way. Humanitarians have a crucial role in pursuing the depoliticisation of humanitarian work in accordance with international humanitarian law.

Hesham Youssef for ALNAP; his 10 points could have been written almost anytime during the last 10-15 years-that's not Youssef's fault, but an indication of how slowly (if at all) change happens in the humanitarian space...

eHealth in e-Chaos: 10 Years of Digital Health Solutions in Africa

(eHealth interventions in Africa) tend to be concentrated in a few countries (eg, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi) with an unprecedented level of duplication within and between countries:One in five do not have a link to any health service outcomes.

• Only half of the digital health interventions can be classified as “established”.
• Two of every three are only focused on solutions in one building block, limiting integration.
• Most (92%) require health worker engagement for them to work.
• The largest proportion (84%) are focused on mining data, as opposed to improving provision of services.
• A bias toward service delivery (81.7%) compared to the other five health systems strengthening building blocks
• A preference for targeting health care providers (91.8%) to the detriment of the other three target users
• A big challenge in scale-up of the interventions with only 53% reported as established.
• 84% of eHealth is focused on “data mining” of some sort, instead of improving service provision.
• 78.8% of the digital health solutions are aligned to 20% of designated system categories.

The gaps in the use of digital health to strengthen health systems are obvious. The review has highlighted the need to re-strategize ideation, development, and the scale-up of digital health in the region.

Humphrey C Karamagi, Derrick Muneene,Benson Droti, Violet Jepchumba, Joseph C Okeibunor, Juliet Nabyonga, James Avoka Asamani, Moussa Traore & Hillary Kipruto for ictworks on one of the of ICT hypes that never really went beyond hype + promises...

China’s demand for Africa’s donkeys is rising. Why it’s time to control the trade

My findings are that the scale of the donkey trade, both illicit and legal, poses a challenge for many countries in Africa, especially in terms of its impact on the most marginalised communities. Besides donkey welfare, a big part of the challenge is how affordable donkeys are locally. Donkeys have a valuable, ancient role as a workhorse and losing access to them creates a huge problem for poor households. The other part of the challenge is regulatory. Only when the donkey hide trade is fully regulated - and export numbers are able to be very limited - might the trade work without adverse consequences for the poor.

Lauren Johnston for the Conversation with one of those 'oh, so that's another issue of how human beigs are destroying the planet' insights...

Bias in Economic Models Ignores the Impact of War in Poor Nations

The major problem with existing growth models is that they ignore the economic effects of armed conflict and poor governance. They expect a country like the Congo to converge to the income level of France, as soon as indicators like education and technology catch up..
Current models do not take into account the destruction caused by bullets and bombs. They make little room for the lack of interest or capacity of weak governments to invest in growth-promoting infrastructure, such as roads and electricity. They do not factor in the likelihood that citizens with skills and resources may flee to safer places than the Kivu provinces of Congo when violence erupts.
In a recently published paper, we put forward a new model that incorporates the likely economic costs of armed conflict into forecasting the economic outlook of a country. The findings are striking.
The estimated correction required to account for armed conflict is substantial – expected national income is 25 per cent lower on average by the end of the century across countries when taking conflict into account.
Strong regional patterns in countries with multiple conflicts are projected to experience much higher conflict burdens and reduced economic growth by the end of the century. Countries such as Afghanistan, Niger, Yemen and the Philippines are projected to lose 50 to 70 per cent of their potential income over the next 80 years.

Håvard Hegre, Kristina Petrova, Gudlaug Olafsdottir & Elilsabeth A. Gilmore for PRIO with new research that should probably make more headlines...

The used car problem

Used vehicles get a second life as an affordable transportation option in Africa. They also create livelihoods for millions of people including mechanics, sprayers, and other garage operators. The trouble, however, is that many of the vehicles are highly polluting and tend to be unsafe to drive. The practice of removing their catalytic converters and other modifications to source precious metals makes them even more polluting. In the end, simply transferring old vehicles elsewhere undermines global and local goals to move toward safe and low-emissions transport.

Festival Godwin Boateng & Jacqueline M. Klopp for Africa is a Country on the complexities of used cars in Africa & how they are likely not 'solving problems' in the medium-term.

Germany's Feminist Foreign and Development Policy: Need for Changes in Relations with the South Caucasus

there is ample space for putting Germany’s feminist foreign and development policy to practice in the South Caucasus. Based on the feminist values of intersectionality, empathetic reflexivity, substantive representation and participation, accountability, and active peace commitment, Germany should step up its political support for civil society and human rights in the region, ensure feedback loops to its policies from diverse local groups, become a true ally for gender equality and LGBTQI rights, and put its political weight behind the promotion of lasting peace.

Sonja Schiffers for the Heinrich Böll Stiftung in Georgia with an intersting view on what 'feminist foreign policy' can mean in political practice & global cooperation.

Don't you have mercy on yourself?

My realisation is confirmed in devastating detail by the notes I took on exercise. At this stage, five months after the operation, my functioning and mobility were considerably ahead of where they are now. My mood spirals.
When I fall at home I have an alarm to press and people will come and help me to stand up. And when my mind comes crashing down? I know there are people I can call. A friend's text comes in, asking how I am. But I don't answer: I don't feel able to.
One of the hardest things about this journey is how its experiences feel so isolating. Not for the first time since my accident, and surely not for the last, I am lying down, curled up, crying. I'm exhausted, defeated. My future is empty of promise.

Peter Torres Fremlin's Disability Debrief newsletter with some powerful, personal reflections on (dis)abilities.

Spent 10 days in Bogotá, Colombia so I’m sharing a thread of the top 10 elements that I think summarizes the city’s urbansim! 🧵

— Alex Modrzecki (@AlexModrzecki) February 6, 2023

In other news
The future of Development Studies. How to promote more critical teaching and learning?

In development studies, and talking with development scholars, I often feel that the connection between people in the discipline is around the concept of hope. We may have different understandings of how to maintain hope or what hope even is, but I feel that the desire to see the future differently from what is it now is one of the shared principles between students, teachers and practitioners of development. In development studies, “we try to represent a better future and ways out of the multiple crises” as Melber puts it in the discussion with Kontinen. I hope that once the MOOC course is available, it could provide hope by presenting the different actors, debates, and alternatives of development.

Meeri Tiensuu for the Finnish University Partnership for International Development on a new MOOC, hope in #globaldev & more!

75 Years of Publishing in Pakistan

Consequently, the state education system began crumbling. In the 1950s, the quality of government schools had been good, and several later luminaries traced their education to government schools in this decade. But in due course, and very sadly, the falling standards of textbooks, their chronic non-availability, the absence of school and public libraries, good quality children’s books and supplementary material (among other factors) led to a collapse of the state education system. This in turn stunted new and creative publishers whose businesses were now defined by more printers or contracted publishers of the Textbook Boards.

Ameena Saiyid for LSE Review of Books on the history of educational publishing in Pakistan since the 1950s.

Twitter thread

In its absence, academics have been driven into the arms of corporate platforms not fit for purpose and encouraged to think narrowly in terms of their individual careers rather than the communal purposes being served by digital engagement within the sector. Unless universities, research councils and learned societies begin to intervene in these spaces in a strategic manner, it is likely we will see this dynamic repeated. And if the critical mass of academics that coalesced on Twitter during the 2010s begins to disperse across a range of platforms, then the communications infrastructure of the sector will be left in an even worse place than it is at present.

Mark Carrigan for Research Professional News on academics, communication & platforms.

What we were reading 5 years ago
(Link review 261, 1 December 2017)

The World Food Programme’s much-publicised “blockchain” has one participant — i.e., it’s a database

But what the WFP achieved here is from managing the disbursement themselves, and the “blockchain” is just being used as a database — which is what a “permissioned blockchain” really is.
It’s important to note that “blockchain” doesn’t get you this for free — as chapter 11 of the book notes, a blockchain won’t replace your back-office systems without as much work, time and money as any other software replacement project. Paul Currion from Disberse, another disbursement-on-the-blockchain effort, notes that:
the hard work is integrating blockchain technology into existing organizational processes — we can’t just hand people a ticket and expect them to get on the high-speed blockchain train. And … you don’t need distributed computing, simulating a competitive cryptocurrency system without the cryptocurrency or the competition, just to manage a database that’s under your organisation’s control anyway

David Gerard on the #globaldev blockchain hype.

No hugs, no one to talk to: how Ugandan orphanages are harming a generation

Nevertheless, in Uganda the orphanage industry is booming. The number of orphans growing up in children’s homes has increased from around 1,000 in the 1990s to 50,000 today, according to international children’s charity Viva. Unlike past surges in figures in countries like Rwanda, this increase wasn’t borne of genocide or war – it’s in large part economic.
The financial benefits for someone who decides to run an orphanage can be considerable. People who have worked in institutions in Rwanda and Uganda say it can cost as much as £2,800 a year to support a child in an orphanage, and the bill is often footed by well-meaning overseas donors. Therefore, the more children drawn into the orphanage, the more money in the owners’ pockets. This makes children a highly prized commodity in countries like Uganda.

Helen Nianias for the Guardian on the orphanage industry in Uganda that has negative impacts far beyond a misplaced volunteer selfie...

Is banning Powerpoint from the classroom the best we can do for digital, inclusive education?

I am not defending bad Powerpoint presentation, of course, but I do not really feel comfortable with the notion of ‘banning’: Teachers, students, managers and IT staff have the challenging task to provide flexible, engaging solutions to teaching and education in the 21st century. The ceiling-mounted projector, connected to a floor-mounted PC with proprietary software from global companies is not the set-up we should be aiming at-because uncreative environments all too easily lead to uncreative traditional lecturing situations. But as flexible as the tools are, they will always compete with other distractions-in my experience ‘build it and they will come/participate’ does not always work.

This post is from May 2015, but appeared in the 2017 weekly review post again and reminded a bit of the discussions we currently have about AI tools & that dreaded ChatGPT thingy...