Aidnography

Don’t worry, this is not another post about what has been happening in London and other parts of the UK over these past few days. Well, in some ways it is, because among many, many, many other things the riots and the immediate political reactions offer some interesting, humbling lessons for those who try to make sense of development and its challenges. Especially for those who may not be involved in development debates on a routine basis this could be a good opportunity to reflect on some broader issues. It could also be a great opportunity for those high-level policy-makers and strategists to question some well-known assumptions about development dynamics. For the sake of brevity, I will limit my comment to three areas: Complexity, uncertainty and democracy. Complexity: Believe it or not, there is no single story that can explain social problems As more and more commentators step forward, a highly complex picture emerges that includes historical, economic, social and cultural pro

I do not know whether this is really ‘an NGO trend’, as the GUARDIAN calls it, to send bloggers to the field to write on organisation’s projects ( ‘ Blogging from Bangladesh-more poverty tourism? ’ ), but Heather Armstrong’s reflections and Tom Murphy’s additional thoughts on the subject are interesting reads. But engaging with bloggers and social media more broadly should not just be seen as an exercise for fundraising and communication, but should also become part of ‘ real ’ evaluations of the big donor and implementing organisations outside the NGO sector. As it is often not paid, looks at bit as the blogger’s answer to some form of journalistic voluntourism. There may be benefits for NGOs, as Tom points out, but I’m more concerned about the (non-NGO) evaluation ‘industry’ and why most official evaluations are light-years away from being more transparent, participatory and accessible. Whereas the blogger can travel to the field on her own expenses, maybe in few months time

I firmly believe that the development industry needs its own sitcom, but this is not the only reason why I enjoy Ken Levine's blog so much. Today's post 'Advice for first-time showrunners' is a real gem, because it captures so many important features that should be 'best practice' in the development industry at every level of its operations. Whether writing a grant poposal, managing a team at HQ or dealing with the challenges in-country - Ken's advice is almost always applicable. I do not want to copy-past his whole post, but three points seem particularly important for the aid world: 7. Hire at least one experienced writer. Otherwise, on top of everything else you're doing, you're re-inventing the wheel. This goes out to the DIYers, voluntourists and many, many other new/exciting initiatives that are engaged in development: Engage with experienced professionals-not all of them are nearly burned-out cynics (well, maybe that is another parallel bet

I read Shawn Ahmed’s post ‘The Nexus of Aid Work and Islamic extremism’ as well as Dave Algoso’s reply and Tom Murphy’s shorter reply with great interest. They have covered many interesting points, but mainly because of my own selfish reasons (i.e. my academic research), I would like to comment on three particular points that I find have been missing from the debate so far.  1. Looking beyond NGOs: The state, international aid organisations and discourses of development First, in Shawn’s post there is no mentioning of ‘the state’ or any other form of ‘aid’ other than the one provided through NGOs. As understandable as this may be for the contents of the post, it fosters a view that many commentators in the blogosphere seem to have, namely that of incredibly wealthy, powerful and influential NGOs. True, they are often the organisations that are visible ‘on the ground’, many interesting stories about aid are shared by those who work in NGOs (maybe adding an interesting layer

The German minister for economic cooperation and development, Dirk Niebel , has no problem with the plans that have emerged recently that Germany wants to sell up to 200 Leopard tanks to the government of Saudi-Arabia, as the SPIEGEL reports : The deal involves a mountain of money: The German deal to sell Saudi Arabia 200 "Leopard" battle tanks is worth some €2 billion. Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has yet to directly confirm the deal - and the opposition is furious. Given the pro-democracy movements in the region, it has demanded that Germany cease making arms deals with authoritarian regimes such as that in power in Saudi Arabia. But now the opposition has found a new avenue of attack. Germany, after all, is involved in training Saudi security forces in conjunction with the European defense company EADS. And according to a recent report in the German newsweekly Stern, the mission is much more dicey than previously thought. In an interview with the German week

A friend of mine recently spent a few nights in a hotel owned by an international chain and sent me an article on 'Adventures in voluntourism' afterwards that he had found in their official in-room travel magazine. I saw the picture of a smiling woman in hot-pants balancing wood on her head and thought that this may be the beginning of a whole new genre of erotic photography, a new type of locker-room pictures for aidworkers or something similarly inappropriate:   Photo: A happy voluntourist ( viatora fortunata nivea ), unknown location with permanent summer However, the actual article was slightly more balanced, yet for obvious reasons focussed on the marketability of the experience. It started with examples from the US and introduced a project that the Global Citizens Network runs in connection with the Quileute Nation peoples in Washington state. It sounds like a decent project, the historic Quileute Shaker Church gets refurbished in the process and in the end 'the v

On Wednesday the German public broadcaster ARD showed the  documentary 'The pact with the Panda-What the WWF is not telling us' on the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) and its close links to international companies, especially in the areas of biofuels (soy beans and palm oil). The documentary focused on Indonesia and Argentina, but there was also a critical case study from India about tiger conservation efforts and eco-tourism. The documentary is in German, of course, and there are no subtitles. There have been heated discussions on both the German and Swiss WWF websites - again, in German. More than 600 comments are quite unusual for the German Internet-sphere and it really shows that the documentary hit a nerve. This has the potential of a German/European version of the 'Three Cups for Tea' story. I can't really provide a detailed summary here, but there are a couple of interesting points with reference to the WWF, but more importantly the rather depressin