Aidnography

Hi all, A long week comes to a summery, sunny conclusion!    Development news: Once more: Does aid work?! Media & democracy in Afghanistan; Cameroon’s ‘auntie army’; do women in Latin America get empowered by microfinance? Traveling in Uganda; the trouble with medical voluntourism; RCTs-it’s complicated; One Belt, One Road & questions of economic empowerment; private security & inequality; how UNDP Eurasia communicates; C4D for vaccination; Read-of-the-week: my poor mother wasn’t trash.    Our digital lives: Switching the lens on service & serving; the ideas industry.    Publications: Management in a neoliberal world; live poor, die young.    Academia: Why haven’t MOOCs replaced professors? Flipping the classroom the right way. Enjoy! New from aidnography Revolution and Authoritarianism in North Africa (book review) There were a couple of reasons why I selected Frédéric Volpi’s book for review. First, Volpi is looking at Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisi

One of the topics that certainly makes a mark on this year’s academic research, public engagement and publishing trends is the critical engagement with new social movements, forms of protest and so-called revolutions-and how to predict, analyze and contextualize their impact on social change. Paolo Gerbaudo’s book , but also recently published monographs by David Karpf and Zeynep Tufekci are some of the key titles on my ‘read & review’ shelf right now.  Even though all of them deserve a nuanced analysis some of the key findings point in a similar direction: ‘We’ were too quick to talk about social media revolutions. Movements need to combine online and traditional protest strategies for longer-term impact. Short-term activism and activities may not lead to medium-term sustainable, inclusive change. Building or fostering democratic, accountable systems is…complicated. And traditional social, political and economic structures are surprisingly (?) resilient as hashtags trend, d

Hi all, It's a sunny Friday afternoon in Sweden! Enjoy stimulating readings, great documentaries, a poem & the odd Tweet! Development news: UN’s new top humanitarian is a highly qualified white British man; revolutionizing mindsets at the WHO; ICC turns 15; how Liberian child soldiers fought in Iraq; refugee real estate in Kenya; are the best days for selling cheap Chinese goods in Africa over? An overview over one of our favorite questions: Does foreign aid work? Uganda & the limits of entrepreneurism; the aid industry’s LGBTIQ blind spot; is localization of aid the answer? A special section on campaigning & communicating development; social media in Africa; how to communicate as a non-profit; NGO-Nothing Going On?    Our digital lives: A poem; advice for new bloggers; review ‘Twitter & Tear Gas’.  Publications: World Bank’s Higher Education for Development evaluation; gender differences in scientific collaboration (a paper written by 5 men…); security in th

Hi all, You’ll notice the new layout; there have been a few problems with Blogger’s dynamic themes so I switched to a more traditional one. The blog loads faster and looks better on mobile devices, but is certainly not on a path for winning design awards…let’s see how I can tweak things a bit-and if you have feedback, comments and complaints you know how to reach me! Back to business:    Development news: Kenya’s florticultural industry does not look rosy; saving children who don’t want to be saved; let Thousand Currents flow! Geo data and U.S. airstrikes; the tricky discourse of ‘social accountability’; a good example of celebrity advocacy; ‘working from home’ and the duty of care; the local-expat relationship in the Philippines; digital technologies exclude marginalized people; young male MBA guy wants to ‘disrupt’ development; the heroines of Haiti’s revolution; award-winning documentary on coco farmers in Ghana; ISIS and long-term effects of indoctrinating children. Our digital