Aidnography

Hi all, The Scandinavian summer is almost over, the new semester about to start & your favorite #globaldev link review is back! As I promised in early July , we will dive right into a new, important, stimulating list of readings (well, I included some from earlier in August...) including an extended section on great new open access books! Enjoy! My quotes of the week Taken together the empirical evidence indicate that aid is not effective at deterring migration and it should be used for other purposes. There is no convincing evidence that development assistance reduced migration flows. In the best-case scenario, aid will have a very limited deterring impact on migration flows with high costs per deterred migrant. (Development Aid does not deter Irregular Migration) I have followed closely how a gender and development institute in DRC, built around four women PhD holders, could easily find work as a sub-contractor for research, but once they developed their own agenda and proposals,...

As you may have heard if you are interested in Canadian #globaldev discussions, the Toronto-based WE charity has been involved in a bit of a political controversy. In addition to ongoing political debates , more and more criticism on the charity’s volunteering and development model have emerged, including from my esteemed colleagues Rebecca Tiessen ( ' an organizational restructuring is insufficient for addressing its contradictory messaging,  problematic practices and international development identity problem '), David Jefferess (' accusations of racism within WE have been marginalized, as have discussion of the way WE gained such influence within Canadian schools, media, and politics as models of white saviourism ') and the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development (CASID-ACEDI) (' CASID condemns the WE model of development '). These debates inspired me to take a closer look at WEconomy-You can find meaning, make a living, and change th...

There are now more than 40 entries in my curated collection of news articles as well as opinion or think pieces on the proposed merger of UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to establish a new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO ). The overall tone is clear: It is a bad idea and it will weaken the UK’s development capacities on many levels. But behind this unified view, disproportionately expressed by white Northern men, it becomes clear that large parts of the UK’s international development establishment are really worried about the decision, because it will most likely have negative implications for their future budget and scope of work. My post focuses on NGOs, Think Tanks and the party political establishment, with the question in mind how these inevitable changes may affect organizations and the traditional set-up of how development is conceptualized, discussed, financed and implemented in the future....

Hi all, This is going to be the final link review before my summer break until early August. I said that last year as well and a week later I wrote a viral post about an organization that wanted to send used bras to Africa ... I will spend my holidays at home (the Swedish hemester or svemester for staycation), read some nice books & think about #globaldev outside the permanent now of social media! Stay healthy & safe! My quotes of the week The filmmaker has given us a wide lens in which to see China’s current strategy. I only ask that you open the lens a little wider and see how one colonial hand opens the door for another to stand back holding the camera, as the cycle continues. (Buddha in Africa) As we reorganise the ways we live and work, it’s high time to recognise the robots for what they are: a botched hypothesis about what work matters and what can be allowed to disappear. Robots will neither save or destroy us, for they cannot relieve us our own labour of bu...

Hi all, Welcome to what is probably going to be the pen-ultimate #globaldev link review before a well-deserved summer break in July! It has been a busy week on the blog, updating the racism resource post & adding more than 30 resources to a new post about the forthcoming DfID merger with the FCO. And there's other news, of course, from Zanzibar, Congo, Nairobi, Japan and the Philippines, Malawi, the US, WHO and UN @ 75. Important pieces on voluntourism, skin bleaching, gender-based violence, baby formula, philanthrocapitalism & decolonizing research relationships wrap this week's post up! Enjoy! My quotes of the week With the Black Lives Matter movement in mind, I am writing to let you know that we, Zanzibaris, demand better. Leaving out the overwhelming efforts of locals in Zanzibar to combat this pandemic, promotes a white savior complex, whether or not that was the intention of your article. You knew about WAJAMAMA’s efforts. I know this because you spent two hours i...