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The guy who turned his failure of electrifying Chad into a social entrepreneurship "success story"

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Welcome to 2023 and one of the first “proper” blog posts in a while-I hope more will follow this year! A few years ago there was a little bit of a hype in #globaldev and #ICT4D circles around the concept of  “ fail festivals ” and the notion of openly acknowledging and critically engaging with failed projects. A German entrepreneur and sustainability influencer on LinkedIn also shared a story of failure, this time from Chad, but it was more in the spirit of praising persistence, not giving up and better-failing-than-not-trying that you often find with viral posts on LinkedIn . Well, it seems that Torsten Schreiber, the founder & CEO of Africa GreenTec AG and #LinkedInTopVoices #Nachhaltigkeit 2022 influencer blocked me after leaving a critical comment under his recent post on why he had to give up on his dream of electrifying Chad. Both his post and my reply were in German, so you have to trust my translation. How it started : Failure. Retreat. For a social entrepreneur like me
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Don’t pursue a PhD as skills training for “the industry”!

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Based on another recent conversation on LinkedIn -this time far more productive and polite compared to my previous experience , I want to expand a little on the answer I posted. Ashley Ruba, a UX Researcher @ Meta Reality Labs, wrote about her experience of leaving academia after her PhD to pursue a career in the digital design industry with Meta : Unfortunately, I often hear PhDs lament that they have no transferrable skills. First of all, stop that. You have transferrable skills. You just weren't taught how to identify and market them. This is why academics struggle to write resumes (more on that later this week). Okay, so what are your transferrable skills? For UX Research, my biggest transferrable skills are: 1. Qualitative research methods & analysis 2. Experimental and survey design 3. Statistical analysis (using R) 4. Public speaking 5. Technical writing Do you have these skills too? I bet you do. Experiences, industries and sectors vary widely, but this is not the firs
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Links & Contents I Liked 467

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Hi all, Welcome to the first link review of 2023! Unfortunately, we start where we left off: The climate crisis, Afghan refugees, toxic UN work cultures & challenges around localization; Bangladesh, Kenya & Uganda make news, but there is also a section on African fiction, science fiction & alternative #globaldev storytelling-and last, but not least, a proper, slightly rant-y blog post on a social entrepreneur & how not to communicate your #globaldev failings... My quotes of the week From January to June, the ward experienced an 800 percent rise in admissions of children under 5 who needed treatment for malnourishment — a surge that aid groups blame mostly on a climate change-fueled drought that has turned the region into a parched barren. ( In Kenya, an Epidemic of Children Hospitalized for Starvation) Climate change shobche darun masala [climate change is the most amazing spice], add climate change, poverty alleviation and gender and you will have a recipe for success
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Dear white middle class British women: Please don't send used bras (or anything, really) to Africa

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I am supposed to be on my summer blogging break , but the world of bad development does not seem to take a vacation... The first time I came across the #SWEDOW (Stuff We Don't Want) debate about what to do with unwanted stuff and whether to send it to 'Africa' was in 2010; in fact, I wrote about a shoe donation project on the blog in 2012. Fast forward to July 2019 and a local British Women's Institute Facebook page with about 500 page likes is posting a picture of two innocent-looking parcels that has been shared very widely. The vast majority of the 500+ comments under the post are positive and I am sure that both charities will receive quite a few parcels in the next few days. It seems almost futile and pointing out bad examples of charity and development is not always the best way to communicate, but I anonymize the post as much as possible to avoid simply shaming a particular Women's Institute chapter. 'Rapey men here are the same as rapey men t
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Links & Contents I Liked 468

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Hi all, Davos came & went, but there are also other important stories from Afghanistan, Brazil, on faux carbon offsets, value/poverty chains, peace intermediaries & much more! And another brand new post on Aidnography -this time about PhD skills & their limited transferability. My quotes of the week “On the one hand, the stereotypes seem to hold true (...). There are decadent parties, executives spouting vacuous talking points about sustainability, and behind it all the mysterious World Economic Forum. “Still, every global development leader I spoke to was glad they came. The easy access to top-level corporate and government leaders is hard to replicate elsewhere, even at the United Nations. “But the question for journalists and development practitioners alike is whether, by their sheer presence, they are legitimizing a gathering which could not be more removed from the constituencies they’re meant to serve. Each year, it seems they ask themselves the question. And each yea
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