Aidnography

Hi all, Greetings from Tbilisi where an excellent ComDev teaching seminar is coming to its end! It is also Friday-so there area links, readings, tweet & more to explore! Development news: The political economy of violence in Mogadishu ; aid spending according to Norway & China ; technology & citizens' voices; local capacity in Puerto Rico ; 'Africa Rising' based on faulty logic of growth? New challenges for GBV in Nepal ; Ghana & the open-source encyclopedia of Africa; Lagos displaces citizens for art biennial; the Liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde .  Publications: Anthropology & the UN system; What is data justice? Journalism safety; Knowledge & trust in an overheated world. Academia: Scholarly blogging & use of social media; decolonizing teaching; the blind spots of (journal) rankings. Enjoy! New from aidnography What have MNCs, Zombie-style dystopian visuals & stolen incubators 2 do w/ #globaldev debates?!? @oxfamgb ...

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’...

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, perha...

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 th...